AUBURN — Auburn Manufacturing Inc. CEO and founder Kathie Leonard has accepted an invitation to discuss the state of U.S. manufacturing and what the future holds at the South by Southwest Festival and Conference in Austin, Texas, next month.

The discussion comes at a key time for many manufacturers who are cautiously watching developments from the Trump administration on tariffs, and worried about how those will affect their costs, supply chains and, for companies like AMI, how they may affect their overseas business.

“Tariff hikes, compounded by a strong U.S. dollar, already make American goods relatively expensive for customers in Canada and Mexico,” Leonard said, “and U.S. manufacturers may suffer unintended consequences if a trade war intensifies.”

AMI exports its products to more than 30 countries. 

The discussion is part of Manufacturing USA’s session called “Smart, Sustainable, Streamlined: Factories of the Future.” The organization is a collaboration of industry, academia and federal partners in a network of advanced manufacturing institutes to increase U.S. manufacturing competitiveness.

South by Southwest, or SXSW, is traditionally a music, film, arts festival and conference but in the last few years the scope of the annual gathering has expanded to include substantive issues of concern such as the one Leonard will attend.

Auburn Manufacturing has faced major challenges to its business before and overcome. By 2016, Chinese dumping of one of the manufacturer’s core products, silica fabric, stole 30% of the company’s business. The company spent $1 million to challenge the Chinese as it petitioned the U.S. Department of Commerce for help, filing a complaint and winning its first case in 2017. Permanent tariffs were imposed on Chinese manufacturers as a result.

Kathie Leonard’s dogged pursuit of the Chinese has won her high praise for protecting small-to-medium-size manufacturing in this country and was likely a contributing factor behind former President Biden’s visit to Auburn Manufacturing on July 28, 2023.

She is also confident about the potential for her current workforce of 60 employees to harness Maine ingenuity in today’s global marketplace.

“There is no better time to highlight America’s factories of the future and where manufacturing will go in the decades ahead,” Leonard is quoted in a news release by Auburn Manufacturing. “Despite threats from foreign competitors, we remain bullish about smart, sustainable, and streamlined manufacturing in America — from Auburn to Austin and beyond.”

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story incorrectly reported the company spent $500,000 on legal fees challenging the Chinese. The actual amount is $1 million per Auburn Manufacturing Inc.