WASHINGTON — The trade war never stopped for Chelsey Thiebaud.

Although President Donald Trump has pushed a tariff truce of late to help calm global markets — imposing no new levies since September — the Fort Worth roofing company owned by Thiebaud and her husband is among the many businesses still reeling from import duties already in place.

It’s a financial burden that grows every day, with TEK Roofing Systems taking a hit that now totals well into six figures.

“We’ve just eaten it,” said Thiebaud, whose company has laid off one of its eight employees and taken out high-interest loans to cover a 25 percent tariff that went into effect in August on stone-coated steel roofing imported from China. “It’s not great.”

That kind of pain lingers all over Texas as many companies face the false choice of shouldering unexpected costs or passing along the burden to consumers or seeking relief through an unforgiving bureaucracy, or even confronting the sometimes impossible task of seeking new supply lines.

Adding to their frustration is the growing sense that the tariff toll has faded into the background amid myriad trade negotiations and, more broadly, an unrelated federal government shutdown over border wall funding.

All of the import levies that Trump imposed last year remain in effect. All of them.

The duties on washing machines and solar panels from across the globe. Those on steel and aluminum, even from key trading partners such as Canada, Mexico and the European Union. And those on about $250 billion in goods imported from China.

The tariffs, which have prompted tit-for-tat retaliation from other countries, are taxes paid by U.S. businesses and consumers.

Tariffs Hurt the Heartland, a coalition of business and farm groups, has calculated that Texas companies have paid $1.1 billion in additional tariffs on products subject to Trump's import levies through October, the most recent month with available data.

Many business owners in Texas and beyond have simply been left to scour the news for updates on trade negotiations with China and other countries — a positive development one day, a negative one the next — as the bills pile up.

“This is a ticking time bomb,” said Ralph Bradley of Jammy Inc., a Fort Worth auto-parts importer swamped by tariffs. “I don’t know why everybody is like, ‘Things are OK right now.’ They’re not. They’re bad as they’ve ever been, and they’re about to get worse.”

Texas remains on the front lines of any trade tiff, thanks to its standing as one of America’s top trading states.

Tariffs on goods coming into the U.S. snag a wide variety of Texas businesses, ranging from automakers to semiconductor manufacturers to coffin retailers. Tariffs on goods heading out of the U.S. likewise sting, hurting farmers, ranchers and many other Texas business stalwarts.

Out of the headlines

But Trump’s trade war has somewhat slipped from the political forefront, and not just because Washington ground to a halt with a record-setting partial government shutdown.

After months of market-rattling trade bluster and escalating tariff antes between the U.S. and some of its biggest trading partners, the president late last year settled into an uneasy pause on what has become one of his defining policy pushes.

He agreed to a détente with the EU to allow new trade talks. He signed off on a reboot of the North American Free Trade Agreement, calling it the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. He postponed stiffer tariffs on Chinese goods so negotiators could take another shot at an accord.

Trump says it’s all part of his plan to get better trade deals, correcting what he says has been a long history of other countries ripping off the U.S. and its workers.

“We are replacing one-sided, unfair trade deals,” he said this month at the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual convention, focusing especially on China. “We're working on that very strongly. You see what's going on. We're doing very well.”

The president’s approach is not without its defenders, including in Texas’ business community.

President Donald Trump says he's working to replace "one-sided, unfair trade deals" between the U.S. and other countries. He's settled into a tariff truce of late to allow negotiations to take place. (Jacquelyn Martin / The Associated Press)

John Mattke of Stone Panels International in Marble Falls has told the feds that an “influx of imported stone over the last 25 years from China and other countries has depressed U.S. production and forced closures and layoffs in the U.S. industry.”

“The playing field with China is heavily tilted in favor of Beijing,” he said, urging the Trump administration to apply increased levies to granite and other stone products from China.

Even some of those who object to Trump’s tariffs concede that the president may have a point.

Marcie Rea is owner of Marcella Furs & Leather in Amarillo. She’s also a leader of the Fur Information Council of America. She lamented how the industry has changed over the years, with most apparel manufacturing in the U.S. long ago shifting to China in an effort to cut costs.

“I totally understand where the president is coming from,” she said.

But Rea said it would now be hard to disrupt those supply chains, explaining that “we’re kind of in too deep.” In the meantime, her retail store has “quite a few items” hit by a 10 percent tariff. It’s not enough to do a “great deal of damage yet,” but the costs add up, she said.

“We’re just holding on tight,” she said.

That’s the rub.

Truce still means no retreat

Trump’s recent trade truce made no retreat on the levies he already put into place on hundreds of billions of dollars in imports, with the president even bragging on Twitter that the “Treasury has taken in MANY billions of dollars from the Tariffs we are charging China and other countries.”

But China and other countries aren't paying the tariffs. And while the recent trade peace has stoked optimism about a real breakthrough — particularly amid reports that some Trump officials are talking about rolling back levies — those paying the duties are scrambling to get by.

Just ask Thiebaud. She’s figuring out when the tariffs, which cover goods central to her company’s business model, will require TEK Roofing Systems to take more drastic action.

“It’s already creeping up on there,” said Thiebaud, who’s facing a double-whammy because the government shutdown prevented her company from refinancing the high-interest loans it took out to cover the tariff costs. "Not too much longer."

Seeking a reprieve

Many Texas companies are now turning to the Trump administration for a reprieve in the form of a tariff exclusion. (In a similar way, Texas farmers and ranchers hit by retaliatory tariffs have been applying for financial aid via a Trump program.)

There are different processes for different tranches of tariffs, with Trump offering no relief for the levies on a $200 billion chunk of Chinese goods.

TEK Roofing Systems is among the many companies awaiting a decision on an exception to levies on Chinese goods. Oil and gas companies in Texas have had some success in winning carve-outs on steel duties, though that process stalled amid the government shutdown.

Some companies, though, are out of luck.

TEK Industries worker Skylor Thiebaud grabs a stack of stone-coated trim flat sheets for forming at the Fort Worth, Texas facility, Friday, January 24, 2019. TEK Industries manufactures stone-coated steel roofing with materials made and shipped from China. The material comes with a hefty tariff imposed by the United States and President Trump. (Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News) (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

Officials at Richardson-based TraStar Inc. had sought an exclusion for LED traffic signal lights imported from China, explaining that the tariffs could jeopardize contracts it has with government agencies like the Texas Department of Transportation and even necessitate layoffs.

“The imposition of a 25 percent tariff will levy a tremendous detrimental impact on our business,” TraStar officials told the feds.

The exclusion request was denied.

Other business owners in Texas have spanned the globe to stem the tide of Trump’s tariffs. At Jammy Inc. in Fort Worth, Bradley traveled to China in September to negotiate with the other end of the joint venture his auto-parts importer launched there 35 years ago.

He has few other options.

More than 90 percent of the items on his order list are now covered by the president’s import levies. Bradley can’t just seek new suppliers, either. The company has “literally millions of dollars invested in tooling, plant and equipment” for the joint venture in China, he said.

“It’s made life really difficult,” Bradley said, explaining that Jammy has been forced to pass along the added costs in some cases and forced to absorb the hit in others.

Bradley remains hopeful that trade tensions will subside, particularly since Texas lawmakers across the political spectrum have pushed back on Trump’s tariffs. But Trump could also instead deliver on his promise to toughen tariffs on Chinese goods in March if there is no progress toward a deal.

For now, Jammy remains stuck.

“Business owners like myself have to expend an enormous amount of time trying to figure out how we are going to deal with these changes,” said Bradley, who’s been forced to scotch hiring plans due to the tariffs. “This is not a problem I should have to worry about.”