It’s not just Trump’s border taxes on solar panels that hurt the environment. The administration’s trade policies are now affecting residential infill construction, which we need to house a growing population in a sustainable manner, close to jobs and transit. As the Associated Press reports:

Trump’s tariffs on several categories of goods have prompted a trade war. Tariffs are currently just more than 20 percent on imported Canadian lumber and 25 percent on steel imported from some countries.
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California Building Industry Association President Dan Dunmoyer said contractors tell him that the tariffs alone could add $8,000 to $10,000 to the lumber costs for a typical single-family home and about the same amount for steel products such as nails, other fasteners and wire mesh.

Tariffs also are boosting the cost of appliances, drywall and solar panels, which will be required on all new homes in California starting in two years.

These border taxes make a bad situation for housing development even worse. UC Berkeley’s Terner Center is researching a report to analyze some of these economic challenges, including a dramatic labor shortage in residential construction:

All in all, together with labor shortages and bad local land use policies, these self-inflicted trade wars will significantly slow residential construction at a time when we need it the most.