After three quiet years, materials are expensive again. The producer price index for construction inputs reached 354.9 in March, a record, and roughly 6% higher than a year earlier. Construction material costs are the line item estimators watched stabilize through the early 2020s. That window has closed.
Copper is the loudest signal. COMEX contracts traded near $5.76 a pound this spring, up about 32% year over year, dragging wire, conduit, and switchgear prices with them. Steel pipe and tube climbed 12.5%. Structural steel actually slipped from last year, which tells you the pressure isn’t uniform. It’s concentrated in the metals tied to power, data, and mechanical systems, the exact trades feeding the data center and electrification boom.
Where material prices are heading next
The bigger variable is policy. The temporary 10% Section 122 tariffs expire July 24, and the duties that replace them under Section 301 are country-specific rather than flat. That turns a simple cost adder into a sourcing map. The same ton of rebar or bag of cement can get cheaper or pricier depending on which border it crossed, and contractors who haven’t traced their supply chains to origin are about to find out the hard way.
Cement is the clearest case. Domestically produced cement is forecast to stay roughly flat in 2026, near $164 a metric ton. Imported cement is a different story: analysts expect a $5 to $10 per ton bump, and proposed 25% duties on Canadian and Mexican supply could spike prices in border markets that lean on cross-border kilns. For a Texas or Michigan pour, the question isn’t the commodity. It’s the passport.
What contractors can do before July 24
Gordian and Associated Builders and Contractors both point to the same defensive moves: lock pricing where you can, write escalation clauses into anything bidding past midsummer, and pre-buy the metals most exposed to the copper run. Specifying lower-carbon mixes can also hedge import exposure, since plants like the low-carbon cement facility coming online in East Chicago add domestic supply that sidesteps the tariff map entirely. The contractors who get burned this summer won’t be the ones who saw the increase coming. They’ll be the ones who bid as if the last three years would hold.
External reference: Construction Dive / Gordian materials index.