The Security Industry Association has sent a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick requesting relief from tariffs for security industry products and asking that the Trump administration formulate a process that allows companies to apply for product-specific exemptions.

“Members have already started to see price increases along their supply chains, in response to both recently imposed tariffs and anticipated future increases,” said Lauren Bresette, senior manager of government relations at SIA. “In most cases, these costs will be passed down and ultimately shouldered by consumers and end users. We are concerned about the overall impact of making critical security and life safety products to the U.S. less affordable.

The security industry is an important segment of the U.S. economy, contributing over $430 billion in total economic impact and supporting over 2.1 million jobs.

At this year’s ISC West, SDM Editor-in-Chief Karyn Hodgson spoke with security professionals about tariffs and their personal experience with their impact. Those insights can be found in her ISC West recap.

SIA said manufacturers and integrators that provide essential life safety and security products to American consumers are being put under enormous strain as they struggle to adapt to an uncertain and volatile trading environment. Not only do these tariffs hurt manufacturers by increasing the cost of key components as they compete globally, but the additional applicability to finished goods will directly increase the cost of essential security products, potentially pricing out integrators and reducing the availability of key products in the United States.

“Tariff relief will provide much needed stability to this critical business sector,” said Jake Parker, senior director of government relations at SIA. “We support trade policies that accelerate growth and contribute to an innovative business climate, and granting exemptions for security products will help this sector financially plan and invest in things like research and development and job growth.”

SIA is requesting exemptions for imported components of security systems, security cameras, locks and other door hardware and equipment to include:

• Alarm systems
• Access control
• Camera systems
• Communications equipment and systems
• Identity management solutions
• Security-related uncrewed systems
• Robotics
• A range of other cutting-edge security solutions

“Yes, we know that members are very concerned about not only the potential snowball effect of price increases, but also a lack of an alternative supply of critical materials for security and life safety products in many cases,” said Bresette. “Even when companies can manufacture products domestically, they will still be affected by tariffs when their source components have an added cost, also impacting the competitiveness of exports. Cost increases resulting from shifts in supply chains globally are likely to affect all products regardless of where they are ultimately sold.”

It is vitally important that the administration provides this relief to the security industry, and SIA will continue to advocate for this exemption to preserve some stability in the current international trading environment for the industry at large. SIA will continue to anonymously survey the industry and measure how tariffs are affecting our manufacturers and integrators, and we encourage you to reach out to our government relations team with any impact statements that you would like to share.

“While SIA is advocating for the industry as a whole, these efforts are strengthened if we have more data points to draw from,” said Parker. “We would appreciate it if SDM’s readers could reach out to our government relations team to share any impact statements about how tariffs are affecting them so far. We also have an industry survey about the tariffs with just a few questions. All information that we receive is confidential and used anonymously. We also encourage those in the industry to reach out to their federal elected officials directly to share concerns.”

View SIA’s full letter.