The costs of road and other projects in the City of Port St. Lucie and St. Lucie County remain unchanged despite the seemingly endless list of items from China subjected to U.S.-imposed tariffs. The price tags, for now, do not reflect additional fees tacked onto Chinese steel and aluminum and other materials used in various construction projects.
“At this time, we are not aware of any specific impacts to county projects, but we haven’t bid any larger projects recently,” said St. Lucie County Engineer Kim Graham.
Tariffs on steel and aluminum, which the U.S. imposed on China earlier this year, could – in theory – affect the cost of bridge replacements as well as culvert replacements, according to Graham.
Bridge projects require steel beams and rebar, while culvert replacements use corrugated metal and aluminum pipes.
“If there are any tariffs that impact concrete, this will also increase costs to the county. But right now it is too early to tell,” Graham said.
The City of Port St. Lucie also appears unscathed thus far in the China-U.S. tariff tit-for-tat.
“I have no reports of delays or increases at this time,” Roxanne Chesser, of Port St. Lucie Public Works, said.
But while neither the city nor county have experienced any changes due to the tariff spat, the St. Lucie West Services District was warned price increases were coming.
Dennis Pickle, district manager, told St. Lucie Voice that they had heard from a vendor that the equipment they were planning to purchase in the near future could see a price increase of $7,000 due to the tariffs.
“We didn’t want to take a gamble,” Pickle said. The potential $7,000 hike would have represented a 7 percent increase to the project’s budget.
“Every $7,000 we can save,” the farther the budget can stretch, Pickle said.
Pickle noted that the district has not received any notices from other vendors, and nothing formal in writing that certain tariffs would affect price tags for projects.
If tariffs were to increase project budgets, Pickle said he would expect the district to absorb the additional costs through its unrestricted fund. If the unrestricted fund were unable to take the financial hit, he said the projects would be re-evaluated to find other ways to offset the expense.
Pickle said the district would do what it could to avoid increasing tax rates and fees, and nothing he sees in the immediate future gives him concern that tax rates or fees would be changing anytime soon.
