Printing Costs Will Spike for Austin-Area Newspapers With New Tariffs

A temporary tariff on Canadian newsprint in 2018 resulted in some newspapers shutting down (image via Getty Images)

If you’re reading this in print, these words were inked onto this paper late Wednesday night by a printing press in Houston. This issue was one of 52,000 stacked in neat piles on a truck, which rolled into Austin during the wee hours of Thursday morning. But before all that, the paper itself came across the border from Canada, as does roughly 80% of the paper used in U.S. newspapers, according to the News/Media Alliance.

Due to new tariffs imposed on Canada, newspapers like this one are going to cost as much as 25% more to print. For the Chronicle, the added annual cost will be equivalent to roughly 1.5 full-time positions, president and founder Nick Barbaro estimated. The San Antonio Current is looking at a 15% increase in printing costs from their printer in Dallas. “In our business, any increase would be significant,” publisher and CEO Michael Wagner said. “If paper costs more, then we have less for people.”

Headquartered just north of Austin in Pflugerville, Community Impact Newspaper prints 2.5 million papers each month on its own printing press. Their newsprint also comes from Canada. CEO and founder John Garrett says they’ve been preparing for the jump in cost, and rather than cutting costs, they’re focusing on increasing revenue – including through a new partnership with Texas Monthly. “These things seem to happen regularly in our industry,” Garrett said in an email. “In 2020, when the paper shortage happened, our rates went up nearly 40% and they came back down. I think this is temporary and I don’t want to make drastic expense changes that I would regret in the future, like layoffs or deep product cuts.”

Not all publishers expect the costs will be short-lived. In Michigan, City Pulse publisher Berl Schwartz says his independent paper is facing a 15% increase in printing costs. “I have not seen paper prices come down in 15 years once an increase is imposed,” Schwartz told the Chronicle. Across the U.S., publishers of other independent alt-weekly papers like the Chronicle told us their current revenue simply can’t cover a 15-25% increase in printing costs.

There is potential for relief. The U.S. has had a taste of this kind of printing cost jump before. In 2018, an American paper manufacturer petitioned for a tariff on Canadian newsprint, arguing that the imports harmed U.S. paper producers. The resulting tariffs set by the Commerce Department spiked the cost of newsprint for most U.S. newspapers. A few papers shut down, per the Columbia Journalism Review. Some smaller independent newspapers laid off staff, cut back on the number of pages in each paper, or reduced the number of days they published, CJR reported.

But that same year, members of Congress from both sides of the aisle fought against the tariffs. More than 50 members of Congress wrote to the Commerce Department, while Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., introduced bills to pause the tariffs, as Politico reported. Ultimately, the United States International Trade Commission overturned the tariffs, ruling that Canadian paper imports did not hurt American paper producers.

Now, the News/Media Alliance – a nonprofit representing more than 2,000 news outlets – is encouraging members of Congress to act again. In a January statement, the nonprofit asked lawmakers to encourage the Trump administration to carve out an exclusion to Canadian tariffs for newsprint, or to pass legislation limiting the scope of the tariffs.