Kicking the can down the road on tariffs won't work for this Maryland manufacturer

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When Rick Huether strolls the floors of his four manufacturing plants — two in Maryland and two in Ohio — employees' typical greetings such as, 'Hey, how's the family?' have been increasingly replaced with, 'Hey Rick, should I be looking for a job somewhere else?'
Huether, the CEO of Independent Can Company, has had to raise prices on customers twice this year and it's the third time since President Donald Trump's first term.
'It's frustrating,' Huether said of the Trump administration's ever-evolving tariff agenda, which now includes 50% import taxes on the foreign-made steel his company relies on. 'I can't run my business the way I want to run it.'
Huether, a Republican, said he shares the administration's goal of reinvigorating American industry.
'We want to bring as much manufacturing back to this country as you can. And as a family, we made a strategic commitment to being the specialty can maker in America with American workers,' he said. 'We want to be here.'
But according to Huether, Trump has made that harder to do. He said he has never voted for the president because he dislikes how he treats people and communicates, and his trade policies have caused headaches for his business operations.
'Chaos is our nemesis,' Huether said, echoing a concern many small business owners have voiced for months amid Trump's erratic tariff rollout: 'We can't plan when we don't have a vision of what's going on for the next two or three years.'
Business highlights
Independent Can Company's wares might already be in your cupboard. The Belcamp, Maryland-based family business, in operation since 1929, makes the packaging for everything from Wegmans' brand of Virginia peanuts to the Santa Claus tins filled with chocolates or popcorn that hit grocery shelves around the holidays.
The company manufactures cans and other containers for popular consumer brands including Swiss Miss, Zippo and Titleist. One of its newest customers is the lip balm maker Burt's Bees. Independent Can Company — whose annual sales have averaged $130 million in recent years — used to have more than 30 domestic competitors in specialty can making, Huether estimated, many of which were family-owned businesses. Today there are just a couple left, he said.
The company employs about 400 people across its four plants. A fifth, in Iowa, closed in 2024 due to what Huether described as a combination of clients' shifting packaging needs and Trump's first-term steel tariffs. He secured some exemptions from those levies at the time but still had to raise prices in 2018 by anywhere from 8-16%, depending on the product.
Independent Can Company's manufacturing process relies on a highly specialized material called tinplate, a very thin-gauge, flat-rolled steel with an electro-coated surface of tin. Developed as a corrosion-resistant material safe for food packaging, tinplate supplies are limited — the product makes up only about 2% of global steel production, Huether estimated, and it's only roughly 1% of the steel produced in the U.S.
Up until about 2007, Independent Can Company bought most of its tinplate domestically but now sources most of it overseas — the majority from Germany, along with Taiwan and South Korea — due to foreign suppliers' quality, service and price. The business adopted more efficient production systems starting in the 1990s, which included a new printing line in 2000 that uses a larger sheet size, boosting efficiency.
The issue: steel coils large enough for that system aren't available domestically right now, partly because American steel companies haven't kept up with manufacturers' needs, Huether said.
In addition, the materials Independent Can Company uses are about twice as expensive in the U.S. than in Asia and about 20% more expensive than in Europe, Huether estimated.
Tariff impacts
The cost squeeze is weighing on Independent Can Company as it struggles to rebound from a rough two years, amid pandemic-related supply-chain issues and cost swings. Those challenges left the company with a lot of expensive steel that it had to sell at a loss. But after tens of millions in capital investments, including in automation, Independent Can Company is finally settling into a new normal that Huether expects to put the company back on surer footing this year, tariffs notwithstanding.
Still, access to affordable tinplate is non-negotiable and remains a wild card. That material alone represents 50-75% of its products' prices, Huether estimated.
With tariff exemptions removed in March, Independent Can Company began paying Trump's 25% levies on all its imported tinplate, a steep new expense that Huether said forced the business to hike prices on some products by 8-16%. After the duties were raised to 50% in June, the company imposed another round of 8-16% increases.
'This adjustment is necessary to ensure that we can continue to provide you with the high-quality products and service you have come to expect,' Huether informed clients in a statement on the company's website earlier this year.
'We've really absorbed the amount of the tariffs that we can absorb,' he told NBC News. 'It's going to be passed through.'
Bringing the shine back to 'Made in America'
Huether is relieved that Independent Can Company hasn't lost business yet since the price hikes, but that worry is ever-present. There's a risk that some companies will switch to cheaper packaging, he said, including options that may not be as safe or recyclable. But it's hard to know how things will shake out…
'You instantly go to: Well, is this going to happen, or is it a tactic to get somebody to do something else? Is it real or not?' he said.
In the meantime, Huether doubts whether rewriting U.S. trade policy can bring back American manufacturing overnight, or even in a few years. Huether believes in expanding vocational training in schools and eliminating the stigma often associated with certain career paths.
'We do not have the skills in this country to manage it,' he said, nodding to a reality that companies and analysts across a range of industrial sectors have underscored since the trade war began.
'It takes one to five years to get a full manufacturing plant up and running,' Huether said. 'We need time to do this.'
What's more, 'We need predictability and consistency,' he added. 'We need to understand what the rules are. If the rules are constantly changing, we don't know how to play the game.'
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com