U.S. Hard-Surface Imports Still Lagging

U.S. imports of natural stone and quartz surfaces improved in April, but both the values and amounts of shipments still lag behind last year, according to data from the U.S. International Trade Commision.

The customs value of those hard surfaces shiped in April to the United States in April totaled $272.6 million, which is up 12% from March – but 12.5% less than April 2025.  23.7% from the same time last year. Quartz surfaces, the largest sector, inched up 3.3% in value from March to reach $104 million, but trails April 2025 by 14%.

With natural stone, marble showed a 7.3% month-to-month gain to $50.6 million and is 20% behind the same time last year.  Granite rose 22.4% from March to $29.6 million, but that’s still 32% off from April 2025.

Quartzite provided the rare solid gain in April, with the $47.3 million in customs value stepping up 38% from the previous month and marking a 13.8% year-over-year gain.

Hard-surface shipment volume, for the most part, posted few handsome gains in April. In fact, the 17.1 million ft² of quartz surfaces moving through U.S. ports was slightly less – 1.7% — than March, and 5.6% behind April 2025. India regained the lead among exporting countries with 4.6 million ft², but that’s also down nearly 38% in a year-to-year comparison.

Marble declined year-over-year by 34% in April with almost 42 thousand metric tons. Much of that drop involved leading exporter Turkey, with shipments just shy of 50% less than April 2025.

Quartzite, meanwhile, provided a bright spot in natural-stone volume, with the more than 35 thousand metric tons sent to the United States posting a nearly 4% gain from March and a 22% year-over-year lift.

And then there’s granite, with a spectacular – and problematic – gain. The 63-thousand-plus metric tons at U.S. ports-of-entry in April is a 42% gain from March and – for a stone sector with ever-declining imports – a respectable move up to be only 10.6% behind April of last year.

Some of that comes from Brazil, which more than doubled March’s shipments to 21 and a half thousand metric tons, as the country recovered from lifting of the IEEPA tariffs earlier this year.

But then there’s Portugal going from an average of 250 metric tons monthly from January-March to just over 13,000 metric tons in April. This kind of extraordinary total appeared before, with 12,341 metric tons last November amid a normal run of 300 metric-ton months. Don’t expect those high Portuguese numbers to reappear in May data.

Get all the details at www.hardsurfacereport.com with the April 2026 import data.