Rubber Product Manufacturers NAICS 3262

Mar 30, 2025 - Tariffs Impact Tires

• Tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico would 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.

• Researchers at Edison Agrosciences are working to develop and commercialize natural rubber made from sunflowers, Rubber World reports. Amid rising demand, the US lacks a domestic source of natural rubber. Moreover, the global supply is currently sourced from a disease-susceptible tree species grown primarily in South and East Asia, which is vulnerable to tropical deforestation. The ample US sunflower crop has the potential to produce over 25,000 tons of natural rubber annually. However, the current concentration of rubber in sunflowers is too low for economical extraction. Edison Agrosciences recently closed on a $600,000 seed financing round to support its efforts to increase rubber concentration in each sunflower plant, thereby improving the per-acre yield, Rubber World reports. The funding will be used to advance R&D, increase production capabilities for customer product evaluation, and further develop the supply chain infrastructure to bring the technology to market.
• Sales for plastic and rubber products companies fell 12.6% year over year in the third quarter of 2024 and 3.5% compared to Q2, according to the latest Census Bureau data. Industry sales have followed a downward trend for the past two years after peaking in Q3 2022. The Producer Price Index for rubber manufacturers, which measures prices producers receive for their products, and employment by the industry have been flat over the same period, data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics show. Looking ahead, sales for the US rubber products manufacturers industry are forecast to grow at a 1.92% compounded annual rate from 2025 to 2029, slower than the growth of the overall economy, according to the latest forecast by the Interindustry Economic Research Fund.