Effect of steel tariffs on raw steel

Domestic Steel prices are increasing.

During the last tariff experience, domestic mills/distributors that I was dealing with pushed out their own price increases when the import tariffs hit.

Keep in mind the 25% increase is cost of material only. Your project would still have labor, shipping, detailing, etc. While your total cost would increase if the tarifs go into effect, it would be less than 25% when including the other costs.

Not steel, but in aluminum I've seen 12% increase so far in extrusions.

Structural steel. I'm not doing precisely a square building. It'll be a 40x50 with an additional 400 sq ft office. I'll be fabricating the trusses. It's essentially all raw material with the design all being done in cad by me and a buddy qualified to make sure I dont undersize for what I'm doing. I was going to build it clear span but I want to put a 1 ton gantry in it and a clear span doesn't provide enough support for a gantry.

Well in that case, your increase will be a lot closer to the 25% than a structural steel package would be since you're providing all the things a steel fabrication normally would.

I don't know much about steel, but Aluminum:

First off, there was already of 10% universal tariff on aluminum, so it was only a 15% increase. The majority of primary aluminum billet is produced outside our borders, majority of that comes from Canada. Most of the cast houses here have been shutdown because energy costs. So the aluminum billet that US extruders use themselves are eating the same tariff.

Aluminum tariffs are highly ineffective because we use a separate market for pricing the metal primary; the Midwest premium is added, MWP. The rest of the world uses the LME (London metal exchange price). After the tariffs were announced, the LME moved a couple of cents, MWP increased by 10+ cents; the MWA future contracts moved up 30 cents, but have settled back down a little to about 20 cents from where we were. So the tariff made US competitive for all of like 24hrs, and now the 15% additional tariff was front run by the market. You get a lot of paper buyers coming in speculating, because it's such a easy situation to exploit.

On top of that, extruders inside the USA are obnoxiously picky about what profiles they want to run and what profiles they will reject. US extruders wont extrude something if it wont be profitable enough, they look at a customers profile book, and try to pick and choose what they want to run and what they don't; then they cry to AA when importers fill that void they created. For example, you pretty much have to go outside the country to get extruders to extrude anything with under a 0.05" wall thickness. This severely limits US competitiveness for a swath of sectors like, patio enclosures, fenestration, architectural products, etc. It doesn't matter what the tariff is, the US aluminum industry shoots themselves in the foot long-term for short term reasons. Also quality is generally magnitudes better imported than domestic.

The tariff basically moved prices about $0.20/lb imported, and within a day, the Midwest market washed that out and then some on spot. The pricing most sellers use is based on a 3mo average, so the pain will come with time. If the month ends today, the 3 month prior average for MWA is going up roughly 0.12 for March which is a massive move in this world; and futures contracts are showing it going up another 12-15 cents in the next 3 months.

So basically, nothing will change in the industry, except everything involving aluminum you buy will start increasing in price over time; specifically in this country.