With looming daily threats of tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump, there is a great deal of uncertainty of what is to come, especially for the construction industry.

“The biggest challenge for us is that they change everyday,” said Jon Stricker Vice President of Sales and Operations at Fries Tallman Lumber, a local family-owned business based in Regina.

Stricker points out that information is coming from three different places, from vendors and supplier community, the federal government and the news cycle.

Tariffs are directly impacting their business.

“There are two big challenges, one making products more expensive and that is not good because our industry is housing and housing is already expensive, and we have an affordable housing crisis. This makes it more difficult for us to sell products. It also impacts our ability to price products with certainty to projects in the pipeline,” said Stricker.

“Customers are concerned about the uncertainty and costs rising rapidly,” said Stricker.

Tariffs are presently on glass for windows.

“Inputs of building materials, American inputs on Canadian materials, we’ve been led to believe there will be a three to seven per cent price increase on basically every component that goes into a new home build,” said Stricker.

This domino affect will start with the building suppliers, then the home building developers, followed by the homeowners.

“When you’re talking about a $400,000 home price, that is a $28,000 increase in price,” said Stricker.

Fries Tallman is taking measures to alleviate some of these uncertainties.

By building up inventory they know the price on, they can guarantee pricing to their customers and offer inventory that is a Canadian made product. Their target is to have mostly Canadian made products in the store.

“The downside is that there is only so much space to hold inventory, so we are limited,” said Stricker. “So that is not a long-term solution.”

American made inventory only represents about eight per cent of their product line.

“An estimate of 40 per cent of Canadian made products have American inputs, like parts and machinery, so there is an indirect cost which raise the price of the products,” said Stricker.

Stricker believes the Saskatchewan and Canadian economy will find ways to work through these tariff uncertainties.

“I’m always optimistic about the future but I’m just hoping for some clarity,” said Stricker. “It will push us all to support local and Canadian products more, as we should have been the whole time.”

Collaborative Construction is a local company that specializes in residential and commercial renovations.

“The uncertainties get trickled down to the end client, we provide estimates based on scope,” said Owner Derek Wu. “Potentially the greatest affect would be tariffs on steel.”

“It’s making sacrificial decisions to the design to justify the cost and fit the budget,” said Wu.

With any renovation, there is already inherit unknowns that Wu can provide answers to from past experiences.

“The tricky part is knowing how the tariff unknowns will directly affect our suppliers and due to the domino affect, I don’t know the direct affect to us either,” said Wu.

“For existing estimates prior to tariff implications, we are talking 20 to 40 per cent increases that directly affect our clients. They are at the mercy of that if they so chose to proceed.  I have to relay and navigate this as best I can to our clients,” said Wu.

Even though Collaborative Construction tries to secure resources from Canadian suppliers, there are times supplies come from a Canadian retailer whose raw materials are from the U.S.

“I have a customer wanting a steel pergola, and the supplier of that steel has assured that we are likely going to see a 23 to 25 per cent increase in their product,” said Wu.

Suppliers can only guarantee prices on inventory in stock. The uncertainty of tariffs will greatly affect the ability to price out and plan construction jobs.

“The uncertainty fuels the hesitation,” said Wu. “We would much rather have the certainty be created, have it drawn in the sand and let us know then we don’t have to worry about the hesitation.”