AWA summit opens with session on tariffs

During a real-time survey at the AWA Global Release Liner Summit 2025, more than half of respondents answered that they were ‘very apprehensive’ about tariffs.

This survey was conducted during the summit's first session, which took place March 19-21 in Chicago. 

That first session was a workshop on exports, imports, tariffs and market dynamics. It was led by Anum Javed Beg, manager of market intelligence and business insights at AWA, and Catalina Steenbakkers, senior consultant of market intelligence and business insights at AWA, who asked the audience a series of questions. At the same time, the real-time results appeared on the screen behind them.

The audience’s answers revealed they were concerned about tariffs and uncertain about what to expect.

The import market

The workshop began with Beg and Steenbakkers giving a presentation on a white paper called ‘Global Influx: Analyzing the Impact of Overseas Imports on North America and Europe’. The white paper examined the landscape of pressure-sensitive label material imports from Asia, particularly China, with its information coming from surveys, interviews and discussions with release liner suppliers, industry associations and Asian laminators, as well as from trade data.

The white paper found that pressure-sensitive label material imports to the US and Europe have increased over the years, with US imports increasing more consistently yearly. Mexico is the country’s biggest importer of label materials for the US, with Canada and China at similar levels of imports.

According to Beg, China’s economic slowdown and overcapacity have created an environment where increasing exports make sense. At the same time, the Chinese government has been pursuing policies to make it easier to export goods by issuing more export licenses and providing subsidies and tax incentives.

Increasing Chinese material imports have resulted in an influx of cheaper materials. However, there is also an increased possibility of material delays, as was seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tariffs could potentially also disrupt these imports.

Other challenges with these imports are that the quality is not as consistent and that the materials might not meet safety and environmental requirements.

Steenbakkers said tariffs are expected to result in a decline in imports. However, challenges remain, such as the US's ability to meet its own demand for materials. Meanwhile, China has said it will shift away from exports, though it’s uncertain if that will happen. China is also currently looking at alternative export markets, such as Southeast Asia. 

‘What are the long-term implications?’ Steenbakkers asked. ‘We don’t know yet.’

Voice of the industry

The next section of the workshop, called ‘Voice of the Industry,’ followed the white paper presentation. Two industry leaders, Calvin Frost, chairman of Channeled Resource Groups, and Steve Hicknell, vice president of sales, paperboard and specialty products at Kruger, shared their thoughts and experiences with tariffs.

Frost criticized the tariffs, suggesting they would cause inflation.

‘Tariffs, in my opinion, do not solve problems,’ Frost said. ‘I think they’ve made things much more complicated for all of us. At the end of the day, the consumer pays for it.’

Hicknell works for a Canadian company that sells about 80 percent of its products to the US. He said he’s in meetings almost daily to discuss tariffs and how to handle them and that the uncertainty over tariffs has been difficult.

'There’s confusion. I think we’re all wondering what the next steps are. What’s going to happen? Where are we going with April 2?’ he said, referring to the date the Trump administration plans to implement new reciprocal tariffs.

Voice of the audience

The final part of the workshop was the real-time survey.

The first question was: ‘What is the most significant challenge currently facing the release liner industry?’ 

The audience’s answers created a word cloud on the screen, with ‘tariffs’ being the biggest. Other large words on the screen included ‘uncertainty’, ‘employees’, ‘price pressure’ and ‘Trump’.

Throughout the rest of the survey, the audience expressed uncertainty and a wait-and-see mentality about tariffs. For the question on how tariffs have impacted their businesses, the vast majority of respondents answered, ‘still evaluating the long-term impact’ or ‘no major impact so far.’ Most respondents wanted to see how markets react before changing their sourcing strategy. 

For the survey's last question: ‘What are the biggest opportunities for the release liner industry?’, more than 100 audience members responded, with ‘sustainability’ and ‘innovation’ being the most popular answers.