Artists in the US are once again watching macroeconomic events come to bear on their studios as President Donald Trump’s trade policies impact the global marketplace for materials. On 1 February he announced new tariffs of 10% on imports from China (since raised to 20%), as well as 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada. But even before they took effect on Tuesday (4 March), their impacts were causing havoc for artists in the US who rely on imported raw materials and overseas fabricators.
When the Arizona-based artist Jennifer Ling Datchuk travelled to the porcelain city of Jingdezhen in western China in 2024, she wanted to make plaster moulds and procure ceramics. The ceramics she wanted were large broken works that she scavenged from the garbage and the plaster moulds were cheap. “Plaster costs nearly nothing,” she says, but US customs officials told her that, for tariff reasons, she had to give the items a value. They “kept telling me we’re in a trade war”, she adds. “I had to pay an extra 7% on things that are essentially worthless. I spent $2,500 shipping home crates of broken material.”
In January Datchuk ordered hair from a factory in Shenzhen for an upcoming exhibition and the shipment was temporarily halted when the United States Postal Service refused incoming shipments from China. “It’s like every day there is a new thing,” she says. She adapted her practice to other materials in 2022 when acrylic, hair and kiln products, all imported from China, became scarce or expensive. “I don’t even know how I can pivot at this point.”
On 12 March, 25% global tariffs on steel and aluminium imports to the US are due to come into effect. The US imports 70% of its aluminium; 60% arrives from Canada, tariff-free. There are few American aluminium smelters, and sheltering domestic producers from international competition is unlikely to help prices, since previous tariffs had little impact on aluminium production in the US, which is at its lowest level in 100 years.
Works by Pard Morrison Courtesy the artist
“That 25% increase on my material is a game-changer,” says the Colorado Springs-based artist Pard Morrison. He makes colourful aluminium sculptures, like paintings folded around metal columns, which can live outdoors without rusting because of his choice of material. He watched the price of aluminium triple in 2022 and never retreat. He has already seen changes in the shipping costs for aluminium ahead of the tariffs coming into effect this month, but he has opted not to stockpile material to lock in today’s prices. “That is a gamble,” he says. “It does me no good to have a studio full of raw aluminium if there is no collector base.”
Uncertainty causing insecurity
Artists working on projects commissioned through both public art initiatives and private collectors have had to adopt a wait-and-see attitude since Trump’s re-election. The Boulder, Colorado-based sculptor Roger Reutimann says the clearest impact of the tariff threats thus far has been a sense of insecurity among collectors. “I see people holding back with spending,” he says. As a sculptor working at monumental scale, often in steel, Reutimann estimates that at least one third of his art’s sale price goes to fabrication and materials.
Donald Trump with his 10 February executive order on tariffs and the US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick
Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Demand for Chinese goods and services in the US continues to grow for the simple reason that they are inexpensive. Many artists work with fabricators in China for casting or stainless steel, particularly polished steel in which the metal produces a mirrored effect. “It is 200 to 300 hours of labour and that adds up,” Reutimann says. “If I did it locally, it [would] cost $30,000. But if I have it done in China, it is $5,000.”
While supervising a project in China a few years ago, Reutimann says he was appalled by the conditions for the steel workers, and started to plan how to move away from a reliance on Chinese production. Amid the mounting trade war he is now conducting test pours with resin that is manufactured in the US, as an alternative to steel. “The process involves a great deal of trial and error—mostly error—but it presents a compelling contemporary alternative to traditional metal casting,” he says.
Monitoring markets
While some artists are trying new materials and redesigning projects, others have become more astute at contractual protections and monitoring markets. The Colorado-based sculptor Stephen Shachtman says he closely follows fluctuations in the stock of Nucor, the largest steel producer in the US, and times his orders accordingly. “I placed a big order for materials on [10 February] the day the tariffs were announced,” he says. Since he does most of his own fabrication work and is equipped to store raw materials, he can mitigate some of the risks that others cannot. As an additional insurance against fluctuations in the price of steel, he is revisiting how he writes contracts for public art projects.
Stephen Shachtman working on the armature for a sculpture Courtesy Stephen Shachtman
When a municipality or institution commissions work, the time between budgeting and when funds are released can be long, especially when a work is a component of a larger development project. If an artist transacts on materials months or even years after submitting estimates to a commissioning body, the artist or fabricator will have to absorb the risk and any loss due to changes in the price of materials. Many fabricators and artists are now adopting contract protections such as 10% or larger contingencies for material price changes on top of the artist fee, and budgets that used to be guaranteed for at least three months are now sometimes good for only 30 days.
Every decision or indecision regarding raw materials has consequences for US artists, especially those whose practices rely on being able to source specific materials. The Colorado-based artist Wayne Brungard, who produces sculptures of bronze that appear to float on hardwood supports, saw the price of his rolled bronze jump from $2 a pound to $7 a pound in 2022, when his US supplier sent production to China and discontinued the product. Now he imports bronze from Germany at $12 a pound, an enormous price increase considering his sculptures routinely weigh more than 300lbs. Still, he is absorbing the rising material costs, he says, “because it is so beautiful”.
