The Fastener Paradox

By Mercer Hale. From MFGCalcs Magazine, Issue 1, November 2026, page 39.

This year the steel in an American-made bolt got dearer every month, and the duty on imported fasteners climbed to the heaviest we track. Both, by the usual logic, should have pushed the bolt’s price up. It went down.

That bolt is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ index of what American makers get for bolts, nuts, screws, rivets and washers. It peaked in January at its highest since at least 1990, then fell harder in February, and again in April, than in any month since September 2007. By September steel mill products cost 27.6% more than a year earlier, and in August estimated duties on imported steel fasteners reached 53.7% of their value at customs. For the people who make bolts, that is costlier metal going in and a cheaper product going out.

The first suspect is time. Since 1990, the bolt’s price change over a year has followed steel’s most closely about seven months behind, and steel has cost more than a year earlier every month since April 2025. By that pattern, the bolt should have been dearer than a year earlier all year. By June its fall from a year earlier was the steepest since January 2010.

Steel buyers elsewhere passed it on. In March the Fed’s Beige Book reported Cleveland-district manufacturers raising prices again to cover tariffs; one, citing steel tariffs, raised them 4.25% instead of the 3% it had planned.

Nor did imports flood in, at least in dollars before duty: spending on imported steel fasteners in the first eight months of this year was the lowest for that stretch since 2020.

That leaves the duty, which is meant to help a domestic maker by sending buyers its way. In 2025, counting the duty, the average imported ton of steel fasteners cost about a fifth more than in 2024, yet the weight Americans imported fell by less than 2%. The American-made bolt’s price rose, on average, less than half as much as the year before.

The duty landed on the companies that import fasteners. Simpson Manufacturing, a California maker of connectors and fasteners for construction, reported in February that tariffs on some imported fastener and anchor products, along with higher factory, overhead and labor costs, cut its North American gross margin in the fourth quarter of 2025 to 46.2% from 46.9%. Fastenal, a Minnesota distributor of fasteners and other supplies, reported in October that its price increases still trailed its costs, though they kept adding to its sales: “The impact of product pricing on net sales in the third quarter of 2026 was an increase of approximately 240 basis points, compared to an increase of 240 to 270 basis points in the third quarter of 2025.”

The American-made bolt has now sold below its January price for eight months, and since March the estimated duty rate on imported fasteners has risen every month. The clues point from the cost sheet to the order book. The duty made the imported bolt dearer in 2025 without sending many of its buyers to the American one.

What moved the order book, the data cannot say: fewer orders for American bolts, or more makers chasing them. Nothing in our data counts what American bolt makers ship, and 2026’s import prices are not in, so whether foreign sellers cut theirs is unknown.

A price that falls while its costs climb is answering to its buyers.

Live data from this story

• Steel Up, Bolts Down: Producer prices: bolts, nuts and screws
• Duty on Imported Fasteners: Steel fasteners: imports and duties

Read it in the magazine

• MFGCalcs Magazine, Issue 1, November 2026, page 39