Expand<\/a><\/p>\nGrace McGregor Kramer, vice president of strategy and operations for McGregor Industries, a Dunmore-based steel fabricator, noted the company has learned to adapt to challenging circumstances over more than a decade. Recently, the threat and implementation of tariffs from countries, including Canada, poses new problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been in business for over 100 years, so we just try to figure out, depending on what the market is, whether it\u2019s good or bad, places to go and try to get creative, but it\u2019s unfortunate when it feels like the headwinds are self-inflicted for small businesses like us,\u201d she said. \u201cIt kind of feels like one thing after another. We\u2019re able to pivot and we\u2019ve been able to get creative about different avenues. When sectors aren\u2019t doing as well, we try to figure out other things to do, but it\u2019s just one more thing for small businesses like ours to fight against. We\u2019ll try to get as creative as possible in order to continue to build a backlog to keep our workers in northeastern Pennsylvania busy.\u201d<\/p>\n
McGregor Industries sells to the Canadian steel suppliers who in turn sell products back to the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are lots of different types of Canadian steel \u2014 unfabricated steel like raw beams or plate that gets shipped to the United States and gets fabricated, that\u2019s typically what Trump is talking about when he\u2019s talking about tariffs, but what sometimes falls under that umbrella are Canadian steel fabricators that buy American steel, fabricate it into beams and columns, and then ship it back to the U.S.,\u201d McGregor said. \u201cThey sometimes fall under the tariff umbrella and sometimes don\u2019t. If you\u2019re building a 50-story building, and a Canadian structural fabricator is fabricating the American steel, we will sell our American-made stairs to the Canadian steel fabricator, and then we fabricate and sell the stairs. It just happens to be under contract. That\u2019s such an example of why blanket tariffs are so shortsighted because this one, tiny piece of an industry is completely global. It\u2019s goods flowing across the border in either direction. We work with Canadian steel fabricators as a customer so if they\u2019re hurt by it, we, an American fabricator, are also hurt by it.\u201d<\/p>\n
McGregor Kramer fears concerns regarding price fluctuations may dissuade some clients from moving forward with sizable jobs.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us, what will happen is you\u2019ll have an owner who is on the fence about starting a building decide not to because there is so much uncertainty, and that\u2019s what we saw a year ago,\u201d she said. \u201cThere was about a six-month, true pause in orders because owners were (thinking) maybe I\u2019m going to make this $500 million investment in a building, but if I have this headwind and this uncertainty, maybe it doesn\u2019t make the numbers work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chet Mozloom, executive director of The Lands at Hillside Farms in Kingston Twp., stressed the nonprofit has been dealing with the rising price of glass bottles for its milk \u2014 which are shipped from Canada.<\/p>\n
\u201cFarms like ours that have cows process on the spot and use glass bottles, probably 95% of anybody who uses glass, returnable bottles use Stanpac products, and they\u2019re based in (Ontario),\u201d he said. \u201cOutside of tariffs, just transportation alone has been driving it up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mozloom expects to raise the deposit refund from $2 to $3 in the near future to encourage customers to return the bottles to the farm.<\/p>\n
Additionally, Mozloom regularly monitors news reports to stay abreast of any new developments on the trade front.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re always watching these tariffs and if they\u2019ll affect us or not,\u201d he said. \u201cIt didn\u2019t hit yet, but it could at any moment, the tariff. If it hits them, it\u2019s going to hit us and it\u2019s going to hit the deposit rate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bob Durkin, president of the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce, emphasized tariffs don\u2019t benefit American businesses or consumers.<\/p>\n
\u201cTariffs, in general, are just not sound public policy, and it\u2019s been proven historically,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not good for business and it\u2019s not good for the consumer. Given the enormity of our trade relationship with Canada, notwithstanding its proximity and the opportunities for our citizens to be able to travel across borders, for a state like Pennsylvania, which is relatively close to Canada, it cannot be good for the economy of the Commonwealth. This round is just happening so it\u2019s hard to judge what the impact is going to be, but overall I think the very fundamental concept of a trade war with one of your best partners is not good for our local economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Durkin learned many chamber member businesses found a way to work around previous tariffs, he stated the other choices may not be as lucrative.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the most part, those that responded indicated they already had alternative sourcing for a lot of their materials, but not everybody,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd, they may be able to find alternative sources but they may not be equal. I don\u2019t think you\u2019re going to see a lot of businesses panicking, but you are going to recognize that the additional cost, additional time, lead times on getting the supplies, and the cost of processing. It\u2019s all going to be passed on to the consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a trade war continues between the United States and Canada, local firms and nonprofits seek creative ways…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[525,17,43806,219,43763,18607,43807],"class_list":["post-188373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-business","tag-canada","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-luzerne-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-stt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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