Rubber Product Manufacturers NAICS 3262

May 30, 2025 - Tariff Boost

• While many businesses are struggling to respond to President Trump’s tariff turmoil, higher trade barriers are creating opportunities for some US manufacturers, The Wall Street Journal reports. One such beneficiary, Grand River Rubber & Plastics, is seeing an increase in new orders and inquiries from customers looking to avoid import tariffs, per WSJ. The Ohio company’s President Donny Chaplin says two previous customers that had switched to Chinese suppliers a few years ago recently came back wanting to buy rubber gaskets from Grand River again. Together with three makers of oil filters, the new business will be worth about $5 million a year if completed, or roughly 10% of Grand River’s revenue, requiring the company to hire and expand production lines, Chaplin told WSJ. However, 10% baseline tariffs and higher duties on goods from China are increasing Grand River’s costs for supplies including machine tools and rubber.
• Tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico harm the US auto industry and directly impact tire prices, supply chains, and manufacturers, according to an analysis by Discounted Wheel Warehouse. Mexico and Canada – prime targets of President Trump’s trade war – were two of the largest exporters of passenger and consumer tires to the US last year. Mexico exported 22.9 million passenger tires to the US in 2024, while Canada’s exports to the US totaled 10.2 million passenger tires over the same period, according to Modern Tire Dealer’s 2025 Facts Issue. Combined, exports from the two countries make up nearly 12% of the nation’s total replacement and original equipment tire market. While Trump’s protectionist policies could provide a boost to domestic tire manufacturers, tariffs would increase the cost of imported rubber, which the tire industry and rubber products makers depend on, leading to higher prices for consumers.

• The price of rubber has soared to a 13-year high as extreme weather sharply reduced production in Asia, Reuters reported in November. A series of extreme weather events – including a prolonged drought followed by torrential downpours and a powerful typhoon – in regions that rely on rubber trees for rubber production slammed the industry this year. In September, Typhoon Yagi hit China's Hainan Province damaging almost 40,000 acres of rubber trees in the major source region of Hainan, according to Reuters. That represented about 2.1% of China's total rubber area. Extreme weather “fluctuations can drastically impact the tapping frequency of rubber trees and overall latex production," Farah Miller, the founder of Helixtap, a company that deals with rubber industry data, told Reuters. As of October 2024, the average monthly global price of rubber was $2.63 dollars per kilogram, up from $1.50 two years ago, according to Statista.
• Sales for plastic and rubber products companies rose 4.1% year over year in the fourth quarter and were up 5.4% compared to Q3, according to the latest Census Bureau data. Since peaking in Q3 2022 industry sales have largely followed a downward trend. Meanwhile, the Producer Price Index for rubber manufacturers, which measures prices producers receive for their products, has been flat over the same period while employment by the industry has fallen. Employment by rubber products manufacturers shrank 2.7% year over year in March to its lowest level since July 2021, data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics show.