How Will Tariffs Affect My Construction Business?

In March 2025, the U.S. government imposed a 25% tariff on all steel and aluminum imports worldwide.

Some industry experts have expressed concerns about the impact this decision—as well as additional tariffs on imported goods from China, Mexico, and Canada—will have on material prices and the costs of construction overall.

How tariffs may affect your business

In 2023, the Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration reported that the U.S. ranked as the second largest steel importer in the world. Currently, many construction businesses that use steel and aluminum rely heavily on imported products.

For most contractors, the main concern over tariffs is how they will affect overall project costs. As Pro Builder explains, “These proposed tariffs on imported materials could significantly raise construction input costs, which would have a noticeable impact on project budgets.”

Any price increases would ultimately transfer to customers, who may be more reluctant to start new construction. Scott Damiecki of CohnReznick, a New York-based accounting, tax, and advisory firm that serves the industry, told Construction Dive that  “increased material costs will likely drive up overall cost of construction, which tends to decrease overall demand.”

It’s difficult to predict how severely any individual firm will be impacted by new tariffs, especially as policies may continue to evolve. However, businesses may wish to start preparing for potential rising costs, especially if they operate in a higher risk area like commercial construction. 

Mitigating risks with Raken

The best way to protect your profitability in times of uncertainty is to examine your current practices. Are you working as efficiently and effectively as possible, and can you show potential customers you’re doing what you can to keep costs low?

If you’re worried about increased prices and how they may affect your business, consider investing in construction software like Raken to better manage project progress. Here’s how our easy-to-use web and mobile app improves productivity and helps you maximize your resources with simple, streamlined workflows.

Field-first design

Getting good-quality data from the field takes time, especially if they don’t have the right tools. Many project managers spend hours hunting down reports and manually organizing field data.

Raken’s daily reporting tools are built for busy contractors to increase report compliance and save time on both sides of the reporting process. Field crews can quickly and easily capture work logs, material use, photos, hours worked, and other vital data as they walk the jobsite using familiar workflows on phone or tablet. All the information they capture is automatically combined and published as professional PDF reports that can be shared with the office with a click.

Project managers and other offsite stakeholders can easily see when reports are submitted and automatically notify workers when deadlines are missed. 

Effective resource management

When the price of resources goes up, there’s even less room for error when managing them. Tracking materials, equipment, and labor using pen and paper or individual spreadsheets can quickly become disorganized and lead to errors or miscalculations.

Raken offers a comprehensive digital toolbox of production tracking solutions. Our customers can:

• Accurately track material use from the field on mobile

• Improve the lifespan of owned and rented equipment 

• Manage their workforce and schedule work efficiently with a visual labor map 

• Gain automated production insights to measure progress against estimates at a glance 

Keep all your production data in the same place and always know what resources are available (and where they’re located).

Real-time visibility

Clear visibility of what’s currently happening on the jobsite can make the difference between catching (and correcting) minor quality control issues early and letting them evolve into major headaches.

All the data you add to Raken is stored on the cloud, so you can access it in real time from any location as soon as it’s submitted. Identify potential problems with construction or safety violations and resolve them immediately to prevent costly rework, disputes, and litigation that would otherwise negatively affect the success of your projects.

Clear communication

Raken’s reports are easily digestible, for both internal and external stakeholders. Customize reports by audience and share them right from our app via email.

Use Raken to keep project owners and other partners regularly informed of project progress with documentation that highlights your hard work and clearly demonstrates any unanticipated setbacks like bad weather or delayed deliveries. Making sure external stakeholders feel involved throughout the construction process can help offset the high material costs that have been passed to your customers by improving overall satisfaction.