U.S. hot-rolled band steel, the grade that feeds most agricultural equipment plants, hit $1,208 per metric ton on June 24 — the highest level since April 2023 and 70% above the $710 reading on Feb. 10, 2025, the day President Donald Trump announced the 25% Section 232 tariff applied to all countries.

The surcharge has not landed the way its sponsors described. Domestic mills have lifted prices to track the imported-steel landed cost, leaving U.S. buyers paying roughly the same as the tariffed alternative.

Who is paying the same price, on either side of the border

Keith Johnson, president of Kondex Corporation in Wisconsin, sources steel exclusively from U.S. mills. He walked through the math at a Sept. 15 Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) roundtable.

"By the time you tack on all the tariffs and shipping and all that stuff, it miraculously comes out to the very same price. And so, I'm not saying there's manipulation going on, but I don't know," Johnson said.

Kondex makes cutting and wear-resistant components for agriculture, lawn and turf, and construction, and supplies every major original equipment manufacturer in those segments. Johnson said an offer from Europe today lands within rounding distance of his current U.S. quote.

Aurelius Chaves Jr., president and owner of Midland Machinery in upstate New York, runs a similar experiment on road-widening equipment. When he requests a quote from a U.S. mill, the response matches the landed price of his established Canadian supplier plus the duty.

"I think it's because when your competition has to charge you their price plus 50%, you're going to mark yours right up to what they're charging minus 1%," Chaves said. He plans to keep buying from Canada and absorb the tariff.

What the Cato Institute and Peterson Institute see in the data

Cato Institute analysts put the U.S. hot-rolled band price 54% above Western Europe and 146% above the world steel export market in late June. Gary Hufbauer, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the domestic number moved in near-lockstep with the international landed price.

"We found that as best we could measure, the U.S. steel prices of domestic steel went up almost as much, but not quite as much as the landed price," Hufbauer said. "Most of the U.S. steel firms [are] pricing to meet the alternative source of supply, which is the imported price, and so they're just behaving like economic models would say they should behave."

Why U.S. steel isn't always an option

Tariff arithmetic isn't the only obstacle. AEM's Kip Eideberg, senior vice president of government and industry relations, said domestic steel often can't meet volume or delivery requirements.

"In many cases, the steel or steel-containing component a manufacturer needs is not readily available from a U.S. supplier in the required quantity or on the required timeline," Eideberg said in a statement to Agri-Pulse.

He added that relationships and tooling investments take years to build. "A tariff does not suddenly create a qualified domestic supplier. In some cases, manufacturers have little practical choice but to continue using an established foreign source and pay the tariff. In other cases, they buy domestically but pay a higher price because the tariff has raised prices throughout the market."

How high the tariff has climbed

The current stack of duties reflects four iterations in 2025:

• 25% base Section 232 tariff, announced Feb. 10
• 50% rate now in effect on most imports, with the United Kingdom at 25% under the U.S.-UK economic prosperity deal
• 10% rate on steel that is at least 85% U.S.-sourced
• 15% temporary rate on certain metal-intensive equipment — including combines and harvesters after the June expansion — expiring Dec. 31, 2027

Eideberg said the lower 10% line offers real improvement but no shortcut.

"It is not a silver bullet. While it is an improvement over the higher rate, reconfiguring a complex supply chain can take years, and the availability and cost of qualifying material will determine whether the lower tariff produces meaningful net savings," he said.

The same dynamic showed up under the 25% duties imposed in 2018, Eideberg added, but the 2025 stack is broader and cumulative. Tariffs can still apply to fabricated assemblies, hydraulics, and powertrain components before a combine reaches final assembly.

What changes for farm machinery margins

For equipment buyers, the practical question is how much of the steel bill reaches the sticker. AEM argues the tariff flow-through hits inputs that don't carry the reduced 15% rate, so a farm payment on a new combine in 2026 or 2027 still carries embedded steel duties upstream of the assembly line. Watch the December 2027 expiration of the 15% equipment carve-out — and whether domestic hot-rolled band stays above $1,200/ton into the 2026 planting season — for the next read on what those machines will cost.