A boat builder with a plant in Tacoma that went public with its federal funding issues near the first wave of the Trump administration’s cutbacks has seen some reversal.
In an emailed response to questions from The News Tribune, SAFE Boats International CEO Richard Schwarz said Wednesday that all contracts previously “paused” had been released.
“We have been authorized to restart work on those boats,” Schwarz said of the patrol vessels built by the Bremerton-based firm.
“In addition, the payments that had been held by the U.S. Navy for work completed prior to the stop-work orders were finally received last week,” he added.
Schwarz in early March appeared in a virtual briefing for reporters hosted by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, to spotlight funding freezes hitting various entities in the state.
At the time, he told reporters that his company’s Ukraine contract was stopped, “even though we have four boats completely done, two more in production and have ordered most of the long-lead materials for the remaining two.”
The News Tribune has previously reported on SAFE Boat’s work on the Ukraine project, first in 2021 when the company announced it would reopen its Tacoma facility for the effort and again in 2023 for a status update when SAFE Boats was creating and outfitting eight Mark VI patrol boats in a more-than $100 million contract with the U.S. Navy for Ukraine, along with providing operational training.
The SAFE Boats Mark VI is an 85-foot patrol boat previously only used by the U.S. Navy. The project was the result of plans in the works long before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
While the company received good news on its contracts, tariffs have presented a new hurdle.
“We are now sorting through the various tariffs to determine our strategy for navigating those,” he said this week via email. “Obviously, the tariffs on aluminum are not helpful for an aluminum boat builder and will increase our production costs.”
The Trump administration imposed 25% tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum from all countries starting March 12. During his first term in 2018, President Trump imposed a 25% tariff on steel and a 10% tariff on aluminum imports.
Schwarz added that the company “cannot pass those higher costs along to the customers for most of the boats that are currently on order because those are fixed price contracts.”
As a result, the company is reviewing its options to raise prices for future sales.
“The uncertainty surrounding the other reciprocal tariffs make it very difficult for us to determine an appropriate strategy and response,” he noted. “In the long run we expect higher costs both directly attributable to the tariffs and indirectly through higher inflation will force us to increase prices.”
Schwarz wrote that most of SAFE Boats’ customers “are local, state, and federal governments, so the majority of these costs will be borne by taxpayers through higher prices.”
