County unsure how tariffs will affect projects, budget
Construction is progressing at the new EMS base on U.S. 18 South. The base is one of two new building projects for Burke County, with the other being a new Animal Services building on Kirksey Drive.
Epley
Wood
With the tariff landscape shifting faster than the early springtime weather in Burke County, local officials have adopted a wait-and-see approach out of sheer necessity.
Since the Trump Administration announced historically high import tariffs on practically all of the United States’ trading partners last week, the entire world economy has been in a state of flux.
Even with Trump’s decision to delay the tariffs 90 days for many countries, the future of the global economy is uncertain, but this much is known: If and when the tariffs do go into effect, many products Americans use every day will likely rise in price.
Construction materials like steel, aluminum, and lumber would be among the products heavily impacted.
That fact would seem especially worrisome since the county is currently in the early construction phase of two major capital projects, new buildings for Emergency Services and Animal Services.
Both are being paid for by state and federal grant money and should be nearing completion by the end of the year.
In addition, Burke is in the planning stages for constructing an industrial shell building at the Burke Business Park with $20 million of the $35.8 million it received from the state for the Great Meadows Industrial site.
It’s also budget season for counties and municipalities preparing for the start of the 2025-26 fiscal year July 1.
Burke County Manager Brian Epley said he’s focusing on the tasks at hand rather than getting caught up in the endless speculation swirling around the issue.
“There’s so much required speculation that it’s not something that we can address until we see what’s going to happen,” Epley said. “Trying to forecast some of those nuances is not something that we control.
“The reality is, we’re going to monitor that federal policy, and we’re going to manage the very best that we can.”
Epley said it’s far too soon for conjecture on how the tariffs might impact the county’s in-progress construction projects, and he isn’t sure what the effects might be on next year’s budget.
And Burke County isn’t alone.
“Any federal policy change is something that we have to be aware of, and we have to try to navigate,” Epley said. “It’s also something that every other state and county in the United States of America is dealing with.
“I think we all want to be optimistic that it’s going to help infuse energy into the national economy, and that we’ll feel some impact from that. But at a local level, our focus is on, how do we make Burke County be the best it can be?”
Alan Wood, president and CEO of Burke Partnership for Economic Development (BDI) is on the same page.
“I really think that it’s probably too early to gauge all the impact there’ll be,” Wood said. “There’ll be some winners, and there’ll be some that are not.
“The goal is to increase manufacturing in the U.S., and that’s one possible outcome,” Wood said. “I think you just have to take a wait-and-see attitude and just work through the process.”
Both Epley and Wood are hopeful Trump’s strategy will eventually have a positive effect.
“We’ll just take a measured approach and see how this plays out, and hopefully, we can come out the back side of it in better shape,” Wood said.
Marty Queen is the senior reporter. He may be reached at 828-445-8595 or marty@thepaper.media.
