How the 50 percent metal tariff is reshaping commercial roofing bids

The 50 percent tariff on imported steel and aluminum is not a headline anymore. It is a line item on every commercial roofing bid my team writes in 2026. Aluminum mill shapes are up 33 percent year over year. Steel mill products are up 20.7 percent. If your estimating template still runs on 2024 metal pricing, you are not competing. You are subsidizing the owner.

TL;DR: Section 232 tariffs hit 50 percent of full customs value on imported steel and aluminum after the April 2026 proclamation. Aluminum mill shapes are up 33 percent year over year. If your bid sheet still runs on 2024 metal pricing, you are bidding to lose money. Here is how I price around it without losing the job.

What the tariff actually is in May 2026

Section 232 tariffs on imported steel and aluminum sit at 50 percent of full customs value as of April 6, 2026, after a White House proclamation restructured how the duties are calculated. The Commerce Department had already expanded the covered derivative list by 407 product categories in August 2025, sweeping in coil, edge metal, fasteners, drainage, and structural shapes that all carry the duty when they cross the border. That hits everyone, even firms that buy domestic, because domestic mills price against the imported reference and pocket the spread.

The pricing data backs this up. Aluminum mill shapes PPI was up 33 percent year over year in January 2026 and steel mill products were up 20.7 percent over the same window, per the Associated General Contractors’ analysis of BLS data. Construction input prices overall climbed at a 12.6 percent annualized rate during the first two months of 2026, per Associated Builders and Contractors.

For a commercial roofing operator, that compounds in three places. Edge metal and copings cost more. Mechanical fasteners cost more. Any project that touches architectural sheet metal, like a coping run on a four-story office or a wall panel job tied into a reroof, carries the increase twice. I’ve watched single line items shift four figures between the time a bid leaves my desk and the time the owner signs.

Why bids written the old way lose money

I’ve seen estimators run a job through their template, pull the metal allowance from a 2024 vendor sheet, and hand me a number that is 6 to 9 percent light before the proposal even prints. That is the problem with running a fixed bid in a tariff environment. You are not pricing labor risk. You are not pricing material risk. You are eating both.

The first thing I did when I sat down with our estimating leads was rip the static metal cost line out of the template. Every metal-heavy assembly now gets priced from a quote dated inside the last 14 days. If we cannot get a fresh quote, we use the supplier’s published index and add a contingency we can defend on paper.

What changes inside the bid:

• Edge metal, coping, and copings get re-quoted on every job over a certain square footage threshold, no exceptions.
• The metal contingency line is broken out and visible, not buried in overhead.
• Any quote older than 30 days is dead. Re-quote or hold the proposal.
• The proposal carries a hard expiration date, usually 15 days, sometimes 7.

That last one matters more than people think. A 30-day proposal in this market is a free option you’re handing the owner. They will shop you, the metal will move, and you will be honoring a number that was right three weeks ago and wrong today.

The escalation clause language I actually use

An escalation clause is not a hedge against the owner. It is a contract that says both of us know metal moves and neither of us is going to pretend otherwise. The version I run now is tighter than what I used in 2022.

The clause names the specific commodity index, ties the trigger to a percentage move from the bid date, and caps how often we can invoke it. I use the BLS PPI series for steel mill products and aluminum mill shapes because they are public, defensible, and updated monthly. Owners and their lawyers cannot accuse us of marking up an internal number nobody can verify.

I set the trigger at a percentage move from contract date, not from notice to proceed, because schedule slippage on the owner’s side is the most common reason metal pricing runs away from us. If a job sits in permitting for four months, that is the owner’s choice and the owner’s cost exposure. The clause makes that explicit before the contract is signed, not after the metal shows up at the warehouse.

If you are writing one of these for the first time, two things matter. Use a published index, not a vendor’s internal sheet. Put a worked numerical example in the contract attachment so the owner’s procurement person can see how the math runs before the trigger fires. Surprises after the fact destroy the relationship even when the clause is technically enforceable.

How to lock material early without speculating with company cash

The temptation in a rising market is to buy ahead. Lock the coil, lock the fasteners, lock the insulation, sit on it, and feel good about your hedge. I’ve watched companies blow up doing exactly that. You are not a commodities trader. You are a roofing operator. The minute you tie up working capital in inventory you cannot install in the next 60 days, you have made a bet, not a business decision.

The cleaner path is to push the buyout decision onto the contract. When we sign a job with significant metal scope, the contract includes a metal release date tied to the deposit or the first progress draw. The owner funds the metal buy. We release the PO. The metal is locked at signing, not speculated against next quarter’s cash flow.

For jobs that haven’t signed yet but are likely to, I’ll work with our supplier to get a price hold for 30 or 45 days at the quoted spec. Some suppliers will do it, some won’t. The ones that will are the ones we run more volume through, and that relationship is worth more than the spread on any single job.

I will not buy speculatively against a verbal commitment. I’ve seen owners walk after a handshake more than once. The general rule on my desk is simple. Metal does not get bought until the deposit clears. Period.

What to tell the owner before the number lands on their desk

The conversation I have with owners before the bid number drops has changed completely in the last 18 months. I used to walk them through scope. Now I walk them through the metal cost trajectory first.

I tell them, in plain language, that aluminum mill shapes are up 33 percent year over year and steel mill products are up over 20 percent, and that the bid in front of them reflects a market that moves monthly. I show them the escalation clause and the published index it ties to. I tell them what the trigger is and what their exposure looks like in a worked example.

This is not a sales pitch. It is risk education. The owners who sign with us are the ones who understand that the bid number is honest. The ones who walk because someone down the street is 8 percent lower without an escalation clause are walking into a change order war, and that is their problem, not mine.

I’d rather lose a bid to a competitor’s discipline than win a bid by hiding the math. The cost of winning a job that hemorrhages metal margin for 12 months is higher than the cost of losing it on day one. That is a lesson I learned the hard way running a $35 million company through the 2018 steel volatility, and it applies harder now than it did then.

The bid you walk away from

The hardest discipline in this market is the walk-away bid. The job where the owner refuses an escalation clause, refuses a price-hold release on metal, and shops your number against a competitor running a fixed bid out of a 2024 template.

You walk away. You do not chase that work.

The competitor will win the job, the metal will move, and one of two things will happen. They will eat the loss and bleed through Q3. Or they will file change orders the owner will fight, the relationship will die, and the job will end in litigation or a half-finished roof. Neither outcome helps you. The market will sort it out.

What you do instead is build pipeline with owners who understand the math. The general contractors and developers I know who are running good projects right now are not the ones chasing the cheapest number. They are the ones who want the bid that holds. They’ve been burned by the cheap bid before. They remember.

That is the playbook on my desk in May 2026. Re-quote the metal. Write the escalation clause around a public index. Push the buyout onto the contract. Educate the owner before the number lands. Walk away from the jobs that are priced to fail. The tariff is not going anywhere this year. The companies that survive it are the ones that price it honestly and tell the owner the truth.