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It’s a phone interview, but you can practically see Leah Konrady shaking her head. She’s the CEO of Portage-based Konrady Plastics Inc., and she’s talking about President Donald Trump’s plan to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China and what effect that might have on her family’s business.
The bottom line: Tariffs will cause the price of goods and labor to go up—by how much is anyone’s guess. In addition, they will make it more expensive for Konrady Plastics to get the materials it needs to manufacture its products. And in general, she said, tariffs will make manufacturers skittish about investing and spending. Ultimately, they will cause the cost of living to rise.
“I think it’s unnecessary,” Konrady said about the new and proposed tariffs. “I think it creates noise.”
Konrady said the manufacturing sector slowed in September, October and November leading up to the election.
“But then as soon as the election hit, the floodgates opened,” she said. “What that signals to me is that manufacturers in the U.S. and companies building equipment were holding off on investment until they knew there was a true outcome in the election. They wanted certainty. And that happened.”
But now, she said, Trump’s trade proposals are creating uncertainty.
“My fear is ‘OK, the economy is getting back on track, but is that going to sustain?’” she said.
Konrady Plastics is a second-generation, family-owned business with 33 employees and about $9 million in annual revenue. Initially a plastic-distribution company, it evolved into a full machine shop that makes parts for food-processing equipment, wastewater-treatment plants, and heavy industrial equipment such as cranes and firefighting equipment. It also is a distributor of plastic sheets, rods and tubes.
Most of the company’s business is done in the United States—98% of its material is American-made—but Konrady exports to both Canada and Mexico, buys plastic from a Mexican company and imports one specific product from Canada.
“If tariffs came to be, we could not find a supplier for that product in the U.S.,” Konrady said. “We tried during COVID, when we couldn’t get it across the border in a timely fashion. And when we did find it, it was at a significantly higher price and didn’t make sense for us financially. What’s going to happen with that specific line that we sell to a specific customer, and would we be able to continue doing so?”
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Konrady joined her family’s business in 2020, right before COVID, and quickly learned how fragile the import-export ecosystem can be when the company lost a customer in Canada because shipping across the border became too cumbersome.
She also saw the cost of labor jump. In 2020, she could hire an inexperienced high school graduate for $11 or $12 an hour. Now, hiring a high school graduate with no experience to help run a machine costs a minimum of $16. To be competitive, it’s more like $18 or $19.
“If that continues, and the cost continues to go up, it’s going to put significant pressure on businesses and the economy,” she said.
Konrady said that when she heard Trump talking during the presidential campaign about tariffs on China, she understood the message: Let’s bring manufacturing back to the United States.
“I am all for that,” she said. “I work on initiatives that help foster manufacturing in the U.S., and I care deeply about the manufacturing industry in the U.S.”
But she said Trump’s tariff proposals for Mexico and Canada are confusing.
“I was really, and am, at a loss on why he’s trying to do that. I don’t know, and I don’t understand it … ,” she said. “What we need is certainty and stability, and picking fights with Mexico and Canada is not going to achieve that.”•
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