(13 Mar 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kokomo, Indiana – 12 March 2025
1. Wide of robot moving
2. Mid of Andy Baker, president of AndyMark, and an employee fixing a robot
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Andy Baker, president of AndyMark:
“The biggest problem that causes is uncertainty. We have a hard time planning projects and understanding what’s going to happen in six months, 12 months, two years, five years. We don’t know what tariffs will be in place. So that uncertainty is, you know, that causes surprises. Any business owner, especially small business owners, any surprises it’s hard to handle sometimes.
4. Various of workers
5. Various of workers
6. Mid of a worker drilling a sheet of aluminum
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Andy Baker, president of AndyMark:
“It impacts a lot of things. But one of the things that might impact is my long term staffing. Like right now we have 40 – 46 full time people, about ten part time people. And right now we’re on a hiring freeze, this because of the nature of the season with our sale season, it’s all very cyclical. But higher costs might drive sales down, and that may make us not be able to hire more people in the future.”
8. Shelf with aluminum bars
9. Shelf with screws
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Andy Baker, president of AndyMark:
“There’s a project that we’re working on that requires aluminum extrusions. And we buy aluminum extrusions from probably 3 or 4 different companies. Our biggest extrusion supplier has extruder factories here in Indiana, in the Midwest, but also Canada. And so one of the extrusions that is our design that they make for us, it’s a custom design and actually comes from Canada. And so we’re trying every day, we’re uncertain if we can place that order at the current price we have, or are we going to experience a higher price if we get an order by a certain date, will that price be honored or not? We don’t know. And we’re talking about a few miles worth of extrusion. This is a large project, so it does impact our cost significantly, like tens of thousands of dollars. To us that’s a big deal.”
11. Mid of a worker picking items from the shelf
12. Mid of worker preparing packages for shipment
13. Various of box ready for shipment
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Andy Baker, president of AndyMark:
“Our customers are not rich. They are schools, they are colleges, they are sponsors for schools or robotics teams. Some are even like community teams, like for 4 H clubs and such. And so they already work hard to fundraise money, get sponsorships, grants and such to pay for their equipment to build the robots with so the kids can learn. So they’re just having to generate more fundraising to pay higher prices for their suppliers. So that might impact school budgets or team budgets. And they just have to fundraise more to pay our higher prices. We don’t like to see that.”
15. Wide of a warehouse with shelves
STORYLINE:
Andy Baker says he’s been dealing with uncertainty since the Trump administration began rolling out its tariff policies. He runs a small company, AndyMark, in Kokomo, Indiana, that manufactures and sells robotic parts, mostly for educational institutions.
Baker says he imports materials such as aluminum extrusions from Canada. On Wednesday, Trump raised tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports from Canada to 25%.
"We’re not sure if we can place that order at the current price we have, or if we get an order by a certain date, will we see a higher price, will that price be honored or not?" Baker says.
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