Builders say tariffs will drive Seattle-area home costs higher

Tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico began Tuesday. Builders expect higher prices to trickle down to builders within a few weeks, and to home buyers and renters after that.

Take a look around the room you’re in.

If you’re inside, odds are, the walls around you are covered with sheetrock. That’s made from gypsum, most of which is strip-mined in Mexico.

Behind the sheetrock, you’ll probably find wooden studs. Today, most of those come from Canada.

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Higher tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico will make these and other construction materials more expensive, said Jennifer Anderson, director of government affairs for the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties.

“We’ll see significant increases in those materials, which will increase the cost of constructing a home, which will increase the costs of buying a home,” Anderson said.

Builders, and the banks that fund them, tend to put home-building projects on hold when investments look too risky. One measure of risk is builder confidence. Anderson said builder confidence declined more in February than during any one-month period since the beginning of the pandemic.

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Additional import duties expected later this spring would bring taxes (tariffs and import duties) on Canadian lumber to near 55%, Anderson added.

The National Association of Home Builders has been seeking a tariff exemption on building materials.