Fewer than five US tool-and-die shops can produce 150 dies a year. More than 100 Chinese shops can produce 800. That gap, drawn from a new Center for Automotive Research white paper, is the headline finding of a study that declares North America's tooling industry "no longer competitive" with China.

What does CAR say the US is missing?

The preliminary report, built on industry interviews conducted in the past month, says American companies can no longer "launch, redesign or refresh vehicles at scale" without Chinese tooling. It ties the tooling deficit to both plant productivity and national security, since defense contractors share many of the same die and mold suppliers as automakers.

The trade numbers leave little room for ambiguity:

• Taiwan, Vietnam and China together supplied 88.2% of US cutting-tool and accessory imports in 2025.
• China alone supplied 43.1% of US industrial mold imports, more than double No. 2 Canada.
• China (18.1%), Vietnam (25.2%), Thailand (4.9%) and Taiwan (26.5%) account for 74.6% of US automotive tooling imports.

The bottom line: the US shop floor has lost the capacity to stand on its own.

Why did Section 301 tariffs not fix this?

The 2018 Section 301 tariffs knocked Chinese tooling imports down, but they did not rebuild American capacity. Instead, Chinese firms moved production into Vietnam, and Vietnam's share of US tooling imports climbed from 0.3% to 25.2% in seven years. Mexico has seen similar, though unconfirmed, growth, interviewees told CAR.

Pat D'Eramo, CEO of Canadian tier-one supplier Martinrea, gave researchers the benchmark that anchors the competitive gap. "More than 100 Chinese tool-and-die shops are over 750,000 square feet, employ at least 1,000 engineers and have the capacity to produce 800 medium and large dies each year," D'Eramo told CAR researchers. Fewer than five US shops have 300 or more employees and a 150-die annual capacity.

One sentence: the scale difference is not a rounding error.

What structural gaps did the report flag?

The white paper points to four. Payment timing tops the list. Chinese firms can collect up to 90% of payment when goods ship, before the 18-step Production Part Approval Process (PPAP) wraps. US shops typically wait three to six months after PPAP to see money. CAR calls delayed payments the most urgent fix and suggests benchmarking US Department of Defense payment terms.

Pricing runs a close second. Chinese bidders come in about one-third below US prices for small dies and 25–30% below for large dies. The study argues those numbers strip out tariffs, freight, risk and engineering changes, and it presses the industry toward standardized quote specifications plus better customs data.

Subsidies and workforce round out the list. Chinese suppliers lean on state-backed, low-interest loans to fund equipment and engineering teams. US shops, meanwhile, still quote 15-week-or-longer lead times, the same as in the 2010s, because specialized labor is thin and imports of P20 tooling-grade steel have thinned with trade tightening.

One sentence: this is a margin problem disguised as a manufacturing problem.

What about Canada?

CAR says any fix needs Ottawa at the table. Canadian tool-and-die capacity has historically fed integrated North American vehicle programs, and the two countries' auto plants have long leaned on that cross-border shop capacity. The report stops short of policy prescriptions, but it positions Canada as a co-stakeholder, not a bystander.

What to watch

The white paper is preliminary, so the next signal is the finalized version and any response from the US Department of Commerce or the Department of Defense. Automakers running major launches over the next 18 months, including the next round of battery-electric programs, will offer the first real test of whether domestic shops can absorb a redesign cycle without leaning on Asian imports. If US tooling lead times hold at 15 weeks or longer, the gap CAR flagged will not have closed.