Kris B. Mamula Pittsburgh Post-Gazette A Westmoreland County precision metal fabricator has big plans for expansion, following acquisition by a Tennessee outfit in May. Nashville-based investment group Manufacturing Corporation of America acquired the equipment and machining assets of Fossil Industries then promptly rehired six employees who were with Fossil when it closed, also in May. Within 18 months, Fossil, now operating as a division of MCA, anticipates having a workforce of 50 people, Steve Austin, an MCA founder and company CEO, said Thursday. In addition, MCA anticipates doubling the size of Fossil’s approximately 40,000-square-foot plant, which is located in Westmoreland Technology Park II, a 143-acre development in East Huntingdon and Hempfield townships in Westmoreland County. “There’s pretty strong demand right now for what we do,” Mr. Austin said. “There’s lots of sophisticated, high-end equipment there, and to get all that sophistication under one roof today is uncommon in the industry.” Fossil was founded by veteran engineer James Rose, of Murrysville, as a high-tech manufacturing startup about five years ago. The company specialized in precision sheet and tube cutting, 3D design and welding services. Fossil also manufactured a line of consumer products, including barbecue grills, fireplace components and aftermarket automotive parts, which were not part of the MCA deal. Mr. Rose was not available for comment. Shares of privately held MCA are available to employees through a stock ownership plan, which provides retirement benefits and a stake in the company. Proceeds from the sale of an MCA division become a return for investors, Mr. Austin said. First Published: July 17, 2025, 4:21 p.m. Updated: July 17, 2025, 4:25 p.m. Read article here: https://www.post-gazette.com/business/pittsburgh-company-news/2025/07/17/westmoreland-county-manufacturing-america-fossil-industries/stories/202507170087
Laser tube cutting machine at Fossil Industries, Hunker, Pa. Source: Prestige Auctions/PRNewswire
Acquisition includes rebranding, investment in a new 7,500ft² manufacturing plan
The global trading system is in a state of chaos. Will American manufacturing benefit from it? One of several (and often conflicting) reasons given by President Trump for imposing massive tariffs on virtually all U.S. trading partners is the desire to trigger a resurgence of American manufacturing. So how is industry responding? Will we see a return of all that production capacity that was offshored to China and other parts of Asia decades ago? On this episode, we get a perspective from Steve Austin, chief executive officer of the Manufacturing Corporation of America . He weighs in on whether the pain caused by tariffs, and resulting economic uncertainty, will lead to a happy ending for domestic producers. And he discusses some of the obstacles that stand in the way of that happening, including like-for-like retaliation by U.S. trading partners. Hosted by Bob Bowman, Editor-in-Chief of SupplyChainBrain.
Commercial Real Estate Pro Network Today, my guest is Steve Austin. Steve Austin is the founder and CEO of Revitalization Unlimited, where he focuses on structuring the company's investments to maximize value for the portfolio. He has a diverse entrepreneurial background and has started companies in several different sectors. And in just a minute, we're going to speak with Steve Austin about preserving historically significant real estate.
There’s a lot of confusion currently about the U.S. President’s tariff program. Some of it is unavoidable. Whatever Donald Trump’s actual goals are, his flip-flopping on tariff policy and implementation has brought chaotic uncertainty to international trade, and therefore supply chain operations. But some confusion springs from an apparently fundamental misunderstanding of how tariffs apply to wholesale and retail prices in practicality. A 100% tariff on goods from China does not mean the retail price will double (unless retailers exploit the opportunity to raise prices anyway, as happened recently with eggs) . Even wholesale prices should not increase in line with tariff rates; those include all sorts of “landed costs,” including shipping, insurance, processing, warehousing, distribution and more. Tariffs are assessed on the stated value of any goods at the time they left the country of origin, converted out of the local currency (more about that later) into a dollar value for the purposes of collection by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Fuzzy Math Why, then, is the mainstream media getting its math so wrong? Even the BBC has fallen prey to the misunderstanding, quoting an estimate from Reuters, based on the then-extant 54% tariff on imports from China, that an iPhone 16’s sticker price “could” go from $800 to $1,142. That’s an increase of $342. If that increase comes solely from the new tariffs, as suggested, that means the original import value of the phone, before the new tariffs, was $633, leaving $167 to cover all the costs associated with putting it in the hands of customers — including the ones listed above, plus sales, marketing, promotions, staffing and physical store overheads — and, of course, a profit. (Apple clocked a profit of $93.7 billion on revenue of $391 billion in 2024; a profit margin of 24%. That would put profit alone on an $800 iPhone at $192, already more than the $167 left after paying the miscalculated import price.) A study published in 2018 by The Conversation , a nonprofit, independent news organization , estimated then that an iPhone at U.S. port of entry was valued at around $240, retailing at around $650, putting the current import duty value somewhere around $320. A 54% tariff on that is $172 – half of the Reuters estimate. Critically, that leaves more than $300 to cover other costs and profit, even without raising the price. Eat That! Whatever the extra costs, it is quite likely retailers will opt for “eating” them instead of putting prices up, because many did after 2018, when Trump introduced new tariffs, particularly targeting China, at the beginning of his first term as president. During an interview on the April 3 podcast Bad Faith , Lori Wallach, director of Rethink Trade at the American Economic Liberties Project and a senior adviser to the Citizens Trade Campaign , gave the example of a t-shirt that a major big-box store sells for $8, which has an import value of 8 cents, meaning a 25% tariff adds 2 cents to the overall cost, which is arguably palatable for the retailer to absorb. “And that is what happened [last time]. We’ve lived through this,” said Wallach. “Donald Trump One put, on average, 20% tariffs on $350 billion of stuff coming from China. Did we see inflation spur in 2018 and 2019? No, we did not, actually. It was COVID, in the middle of 2020, when we started to see inflation jump.” Another consideration is the control countries such as China have over their currency — one of the arguments for punitive tariffs against China is that it has artificially kept the yuan undervalued so that its exports are cheap. Because China is a Communist dictatorship, it can manipulate the currency’s value down further in order to compensate for raised tariff rates, keeping prices low. If that sounds financially suicidal, consider the findings in that 2018 study in The Conversation . That reckoned that China actually reaped an average of $8.46 on an iPhone with an import value of $237.45 (the amount calculated in the trade deficit), with the rest of it going to buy the constituent parts made in the U.S., Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. When it comes to the current trade wars, ocean carriers, importers, warehouse operators, truck, rail and logistics providers have more to worry about in terms of unpredictable volumes and uncertain manufacturing and infrastructure investments that guide their own financial strategies. The Cost of Domestic Production One of the biggest questions remaining is whether Trump’s policies will massively increase manufacturing within the U.S. There, the math is easier to grasp. According to the Reshoring Institute , a research and consulting firm, data on manufacturing wages in 2022 paint a stark picture of astronomically increased labor costs if U.S. workers start making the stuff they buy. China’s productio n workers get around $14,000 per year; Vietnam’s get $6,000 annually, Mexico’s earn $2,500 and U.S. production workers get $32 ,000. In an April 9 interview with CNN, Dan Ives, global head of technology research at financial services firm Wedbush Securities , said that could drive the cost of an iPhone to $3,500 . Many therefore argue that the U.S. will continue to rely heavily on imported goods, because they will still be cheaper — even with tariffs designed to rebalance trade — than the same products made domestically. Prices may rise but, in the absence of price-gouging, they will not rise as much as is currently being trumpeted. For example, even if a 25% tariff on all imports from Mexico remains, that might still not have the intended effect, said Steve Austin, CEO of Manufacturing Corporation of America (MCA), which buys and agglomerates legacy manufacturers in the U.S., in an interview with SupplyChainBrain earlier this year. “I don’t even know if that would be enough to discourage companies from nearshoring," he says. "As a manufacturer, you’ve got to look at the whole picture — low wages, cheap land and easy transport into the U.S. market. If the product is still cheaper even with the tariffs in place, it’s still going to be made in Mexico.” Read Article: https://www.supplychainbrain.com/articles/41526-price-hikes-and-tariffs-some-common-sense
What's the BIGGEST RISK Real Estate Investors face? Find out how Steve Austin answers the question. Commercial Real Estate Pro Network
Located at 118 N. Tejon St. in Colorado Springs, Colo., The DeGraff Building offers 34,160 square feet of restaurant and office space. COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. — Revitalization Unlimited has purchased The DeGraff Building, a mixed-use property at 118 N. Tejon St. in Colorado Springs. Terms of the transaction were not released. The four-story, 34,160-square-foot building features 18 rental units, 16 of which are currently leased. For the past decade, Oskar Blues Grill & Brew has occupied the first floor and basement, while the upper floors are used as office space. Built in 1897, The DeGraff Building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Read Article: https://rebusinessonline.com/revitalization-unlimited-acquires-34160-sf-mixed-use-degraff-building-in-colorado-springs/
High-net-worth investors are eyeing historic properties in booming cities. Learn why this 110-year-old Miami landmark caught one fund's attention. High-net-worth investors are eyeing historic properties in booming cities. Learn why this 110-year-old Miami landmark caught one fund's attention. Read Article: https://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/news/2025/02/25/downtown-miami-world-precious-metal-building-sold.htm l
Uncertainty rages about which — if any — of President Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs on imports into the U.S. will actually come into effect, and when. Companies that do business in the U.S. are holding off on capital expenditures, exploring new places for manufacturing and sourcing, and running extensive what-if scenarios, all in order to try to stay ahead of the competition. In order to pull away from endless (and expensive) speculation, SupplyChainBrain talked to a range of industry experts to figure out what happened the last time Trump introduced punitive tariffs, and how differently things might play out in in his second administration. “After tariffs went through [in 2018], there was a big shift in production volume outside of China; to Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and South and Central America. And that’s been gradually increasing every year,” says Joseph Firrincieli, sales manager at OEC Group New York, a global freight forwarder that specializes in trans-Pacific trade. “Now it’s going to happen even more. At the time, it was just China. Now it’s more widespread, including Mexico and Canada.” So far, however, those shifts in global trade have not brought manufacturing back into the United States, which has long been Trump’s stated intention. “Without having a full picture, it’s hard to say whether tariffs themselves will bring back jobs,” says Steve Austin, CEO of Manufacturing Corporation of America (MCA), which buys and agglomerates legacy manufacturers in the U.S. Austin points to important elements such as funding for research and development, as well as tax breaks that offset investments in manufacturing and other infrastructure, such as under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which is already being sunsetted, and will expire at the end of 2025. “It’s the overall economic plan that dictates whether there will be more manufacturing jobs in the U.S.,” he says. While tariffs have long been a normal instrument of trade, the widespread effects — particularly when those tariffs are sudden and aggressive — have proved hard to predict and control. “Last time [Trump] put tariffs on aluminum and steel to boost U.S. steel and maybe sales worldwide," says Simon Geale, executive vice president at Proxima , a procurement and supply consulting firm that's part of Bain & Co. "But what happened was that U.S. companies saw an opportunity to put prices up and close the gap between their own steel and imported steel. And then foreign buyers put their own tariffs on U.S. steel. So half of what you wanted to come true came true, and the other half didn’t go how you wanted it. And downstream industries, those using steel, were reported to suffer from increased costs leading to reduced demand, which reportedly offset any job gains a few times over through employment cuts. So ultimately it was consumers who lost out.” Arash Azadegan, professor and vice chair of the Supply Chain Management Department at the Business School at Rutgers University , agrees that consumers are likely to feel the pinch in terms of price rises because of the new tariffs. “The administration is smart enough to know that that's what’s going to happen," he says, "but the purpose is something larger than that,” he says. All seem to agree that Trump is trying to boost the American economy by eradicating trade deficits through tariffs. During an interview for a podcast by The New York Times February 18, White House senior trade adviser Peter Navarro, also known as Trump’s Tariff Czar, argued that an increase in wages, combined with tax cuts and greater foreign investment in U.S. businesses, would put enough money in American pockets to offset rising prices. “If real wages rise faster than any other types of inflation, people are still better off,” he said. Trump himself seems to have backed off his election promises to bring prices down on Day 1. “We may have short term, some, a little pain ,” he told reporters on February 16. “And people understand that." But that could be a dicey bet. “They think it’s taking your medication, but there are side effects,” says Azadegan. He points out that higher costs were part of the effect when Trump introduced a 25% tariff on foreign steel in 2018, and they weren’t purely in line with the rise in costs of production. Azadegan says the average increase in cost in terms of materials per automobile was $400-$600, but the actual price of a car went up three times that much. “It’s a big enigma, other than to suggest that many firms across the supply chain kind of hedged their bets in preparation," he says. "We see that happening in other areas. Any time there’s turbulence, there’s hedging going on.” As an example, Azadegan cites the way the cost of a gallon of gas goes up immediately when the price of a barrel of oil increases, but what consumers pay at the pump takes much longer to fall when the oil market drops. “That’s a form of hedging,” he says.