Trump tariffs to hurt US boat building, maker warns

A North American boat builder has warned that US President Donald Trump’s tariffs levied on imported aluminium plate will deeply hurt the industry.

Bill Yeargin, the chief executive of Orlando, Florida-based Correct Craft, told the Washington Examiner that Trump’s global trade war was squeezing the US boat manufacturing industry, and threatening the jobs of up to 650,000 workers.

“The last few years have been great for our industry. And, thanks to President Trump’s historic tax reform, our outlook was even better,” Yeargin, whose company makes aluminium plate boats under the SeaArk brand, told the Examiner.

“Today, I am less optimistic,” he said in an editorial published at the weekend.

“We have found ourselves in the crosshairs of a trade war, one that will drown out the effects of tax reform and risk our industry’s promising future, taking American workers and consumers down with it.”

Trump has imposed a 200 per cent tariff on aluminium plate imported from China in an effort to protect locally made products that account for more than an estimated 40 per cent of the US’s fishing and pontoon boat sales. Anyone in the US importing aluminium plate from any global source is also hit with an extra 10 per cent tariff, meaning Chinese plate is hit with an effective 210 per cent tariff.

Adding pressure to US boat maker is a global jump in the price of aluminium plate in response to the tariffs, which in turn puts pressure on domestic prices for the metal.

Australia is exempt from the tariffs that have also been levied on the EU, Canada and Mexico, in addition to China.

The US has also threatened to impose sanctions against Rusal, Russia’s biggest aluminum producer, and the world’s second largest source of the metal, over concerns the company’s owner, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, had tried to destabilise the US economy.

Correct Craft recently added an Austrian-sourced electric drive system called Ingenity P220 to its growing list of acquisitions.