President Donald Trump’s push for tariffs on Canada — and his administration’s subsequent delays and exemptions — are frustrating efforts to import lumber from the country and putting the building supply market on edge.

The back-and-forth over whether tariffs will be imposed or not has businesses unable to trust price stability, and risks backing up the supply chain for US homebuilders. The reluctance to pay a tariff, which could be changed or canceled any day, “freezes these markets up,” according to Don Magruder, who runs a building material company based in Florida.

Reprinted courtesy of Thomas Seal, Bloomberg and Prashant Gopal, Bloomberg