As of Thursday morning, there are 25 percent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imported into the United States. Canada has responded to President Donald Trump's latest tariffs with 25 percent taxes of its own.

Canada is the biggest supplier of those metals for the U.S., which are then used for products like nuts and bolts, sheet metal, machining and beer cans. Will those levees be a problem for Minnesota companies that get their steel from Iron Range-mined ore and taconite?

Jason Wobbema, president of Hibbing-based Advanced Machine Guarding Solutions, joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer on Morning Edition to share his perspective.

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. Click the player button above to listen to the full conversation.

Because you already use U.S.-sourced materials, is your business a bit insulated from this trade war?

Wobbema: Not necessarily. In the last couple of weeks, since the tariffs were announced, we have seen domestic prices increase — and that comes every time that there are tariffs that are being announced or enforced.

Do you do any business with Canada?

Wobbema: We do and our Canadian customers are not overly happy with us right now. But as of right now, our product isn't being tariffed from Canada.

Are you worried if this trade war continues that it could really affect your business?

Wobbema: Yeah, I think timing is a little bit inconvenient. I mean, we're just getting through some of the inflation that we just saw for the last couple of years.

But when we started our business four or five years ago, we were in the middle of COVID, when we saw some of the highest steel pricing ever. So we were able to survive that.

We're committed to using domestic-made steel. Because of being on the Iron Range, that's important to us.

U.S. Steel says if it can’t find a buyer, it’ll shut down some plants. Do you worry about the health of your U.S. suppliers?

Wobbema: I think that's a question I can't really answer, as far as the strength of U.S. Steel. But on the Iron Range, we've had our ups and downs forever. We're still able to produce with good people up here and I think regardless of who owns U.S. Steel, these mines are still going to continue to operate until there's no more ore left.

You offer a local alternative to foreign products, right?

Wobbema: So our product, we make industrial safety guarding steel, guarding for robotics and automation. And about 15 years ago, primarily the European market came over with some changes they had to make with ISO. And so about 15 years ago, there were eight or nine suppliers of this product in the U.S., and now there's just two of us left. About 85 percent of our marketplace, we compete with either European or imported Asian-market material.

The intent of the Trump tariffs is to encourage more U.S.-based businesses. Are you a little worried about any competition coming down the pike?

Wobbema: No, I don't think so. I mean, we have a very niche product for what we do and we have a lot of intellectual property, which separates us from a lot of competition with our abilities to build internal automation, to compete on a global level.

It sounds like some of your some of your costs could potentially go up?

Wobbema: They're definitely going up right now. I don't know at what point it'll stop. We consume a lot of steel, which is going up, but we also consume a lot of wood to build the crates, to package our product and ship all over North America. So we're also concerned about the price of wood.

I just hope that both sides of our government can come together and start working together and find a way to help U.S. manufacturing. We've lost a lot of manufacturing in the last 25 years, and it's a great way to create wealth in Minnesota.

Collected from Minnesota Public Radio News. View original source here.