The Tariff Numbers Have Moved. Has Your Marketing?
Frankie Robson, Origination & Marketing Lead
October 1, 2026
Nobody in manufacturing needs telling that tariffs are still a live cost pressure. What’s less tracked is how much the numbers have moved since the story first broke, and oil and gas is where that movement shows up most sharply right now.
The numbers behind the headlines
According to The Budget Lab at Yale, the average US statutory tariff rate currently stands at 11.0%, and is set to rise to 11.8% by the end of the year under scheduled increases already in law. The Budget Lab estimates this costs the average US household around $1,100 annually, with the consumer price impact of current tariff policy running at roughly 0.7%.
That is the backdrop. It is not a one-off shock that businesses absorbed and moved past. It’s a sustained, slightly rising cost of doing business that shows no sign of resolving before year end.
Oil and gas is feeling it first
Few sectors are more exposed than oil and gas. Deloitte’s 2026 Oil and Gas Industry Outlook points out that the industry relies heavily on internationally sourced drilling rigs, valves, compressors, and specialised steel, equipment worth nearly $10 billion in 2024 alone. Deloitte estimates that tariffs on steel, aluminium, and copper could increase material and service costs across the value chain by 4% to 40%, with only 15% to 25% of listed US oil and gas companies expected to achieve revenue growth above 5% in 2026.
That isn’t abstract modelling. The Dallas Fed’s Q3 2026 Energy Survey, published this week, puts it in the words of the operators themselves. One exploration and production respondent cited “increased geopolitical volatility, including tariffs, increasing cost of doing business and increasing lead times for execution” as live issues affecting their business right now, not a risk on the horizon.
But manufacturing broadly is absorbing it too
The oil and gas data is useful because it’s granular, but it reflects what the broader ISM numbers show too. The ISM Manufacturing PMI Report shows the sector expanded for an eighth consecutive month in August 2026, with a reading of 54.6%. On the surface, that looks healthy. Underneath it, the same report flagged rising prices and ongoing supply chain pressure as persistent themes among purchasing executives, even as output and new orders stayed positive.
In other words, manufacturing is not shrinking under tariff pressure. It’s absorbing it, and that absorption shows up as higher input costs, longer supplier lead times, and tighter margins – exactly the conditions that make buyers more cautious, more price-sensitive, and more likely to stall a purchase decision while they wait to see where costs settle.
What this means for your marketing
For industrial and manufacturing brands, this isn’t a macroeconomic after-thought. It changes what buyers need to hear from you.
Be upfront about cost and lead time realities. Buyers are already dealing with tariff-driven uncertainty from their own suppliers. A brand that addresses pricing and lead times directly, rather than leaving buyers to find out at quote stage, builds trust at a moment when trust is in short supply.
Make your supply chain resilience a selling point, not a footnote. If you’ve diversified sourcing, built domestic capacity, or locked in supply agreements that protect customers from volatility, that’s not just an operations story, it’s a reason to buy from you over a competitor who hasn’t.
Address the question your buyers are already asking internally. Every buying committee weighing a capital purchase right now is asking some version of “what happens to this cost if tariffs rise again.” Content that answers this directly, rather than ignoring it, does real work in a stalled or cautious sales cycle.
Don’t wait for the policy to settle before you communicate about it. Tariff policy has shifted multiple times in 2026 already. Brands that treat this as too unstable to address in their marketing are ceding the conversation to competitors willing to engage with it now.
The takeaway
Tariffs are no longer a 2025 story that manufacturing weathered and moved past. The data from Yale, Deloitte, the Dallas Fed, and ISM all point to the same thing: costs are still rising, lead times are still stretching, and buyers across oil and gas and manufacturing more broadly are more cautious and more likely to delay a decision than they were a year ago.
That caution is exactly why this is the wrong moment to go quiet. The LinkedIn B2B Institute’s own research, co-authored with Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, puts the 95:5 rule at the centre of how B2B buying actually works: at any given time, roughly 95% of potential buyers aren’t in the market, and won’t be for months or years. When tariff-driven uncertainty stretches those buying cycles even further, being the brand they remember when they finally are ready matters more, not less. Separate analysis for the B2B Institute by Peter Field found that businesses which maintained or increased their share of voice during uncertain economic periods saw roughly 4.5 times the annual market share growth of those that pulled back, with the brands that went quiet taking years to recover the ground they lost.
Strong positioning, clear messaging, and consistent visibility aren’t the things to cut when costs are under pressure. They’re the reason a buyer remembers you, not a competitor, when they’re finally ready to move. Brands that keep investing through this period, while being honest with buyers about cost and lead time realities, are the ones that come out of it with stronger market share, not just steadier sales.
If you’d like to talk through how your content and positioning should respond to the current tariff environment, we’d be glad to help.
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