Tariff Price Increases 2025–2026: What Actually Stuck on Woodworking Tools

We've all been there. You finally carve out a Saturday morning, coffee in hand, ready to pull the trigger on the saw you've been saving for, and then you remember some forum thread from months back screaming "prices are going up, buy NOW!" So you hesitate. Did you miss the window? Did that increase actually happen? Or was it one more "act fast" email designed to do exactly what it says on the tin?

I've been asking myself those questions for the better part of a year, watching the announcements roll through my inbox and wondering which ones turned into real sticker prices. So let's walk through what actually happened, what the receipts show, and where I think the used market quietly became the smartest move in the shop.

The Announcement Wave, in Order

Here's the timeline as it landed, because the order matters for making sense of it.

SawStop emailed customers in late May 2025 warning of a price increase effective July 15, 2025. Notably, they never disclosed how big it would be. ToolGuyd published SawStop's advertised starting prices as of May 2025: the Compact Table Saw at $899, the Jobsite Saw Pro at $1,599, the Contractor Saw at $1,999, the Professional Cabinet Saw at $2,863, and the Industrial Cabinet Saw at $4,859. ToolGuyd also pointed out that SawStop's prior increase, back in August 2023, had raised prices by roughly 10% on a typical PCS configuration, well before the tariff waves, and that the company gave no reason for the new hike. Commenters were quick to note that a federal court had blocked the IEEPA tariffs literally the day before the announcement, which makes attribution genuinely murky.

Festool followed on July 23, 2025, announcing "import fees" effective August 1, citing "increased costs related to international trade." That's Festool's parent company, TTS, which also owns SawStop, if you're keeping score. No dollar amounts were disclosed, and ToolGuyd observed that the hedged "expect to apply" language mirrored SawStop's.

Laguna prices rose the same day as SawStop's, July 15, 2025, per a Rockler email notifying customers of the increase. Again, no size was announced anywhere I could verify.

Powermatic, Jet, and Wilton (JPW Industries), plus Baileigh, Edwards, and Axiom, had increases lined up for October 1, 2025, with Acme Tools running a "beat the price increase" sale in September to nudge buyers forward.

If all of that sounds like a drumbeat of urgency, ToolGuyd made an editorial observation worth sitting with: these "buy now before prices rise" announcements function as sales boosts whether or not the increase turns out to be meaningful. That instinct, that the announcement is partly marketing, turned out to matter a lot.

So Which Increases Actually Stuck?

Here's where it gets interesting, because the clearest evidence we have is SawStop, and the answer is: it depends entirely on the tier.

The Compact Table Saw, SawStop's entry model, read $899 at Rockler on July 26, 2026, per our own price audit here on the site. That's identical to its May 2025 starting price. Fourteen months, zero movement. If you were scared into buying a CTS before July 2025, you didn't save a dime.

Up the line, the picture gets harder to read. The PCS 3 HP with the 36" T-Glide fence read $3,881 at Woodcraft in July 2026. Comparing that to the $2,863 May 2025 figure isn't clean, though, because the earlier number was a bare starting price and the later one includes the 36" fence configuration, so I won't pretend to calculate a percentage from it. One forum report on Sawdust & Glue put the July 2025 increase at "about $200" on the PCS175 with 36" fence, but that's a single unverified anecdote, and I want to be upfront that it's exactly that.

Other July 2026 street prices from our audit, if you're building your own spreadsheet: the JSS with cart at $1,699 and the CNS 1¾ HP with 36" T-Glide at $2,329, both at Woodcraft; the ICS 3 HP at $5,154 and the 7.5 HP three-phase at $6,500 at Ohio Power Tool, with $425 flat-rate freight on ICS machines.

The honest summary: the entry tier didn't move, and whether the cabinet tier climbed by much we can't verify from published numbers.

The One Number That Reframes Everything

Before you blame tariffs for all of this, hold onto this data point from ToolGuyd: he bought a Powermatic jointer in early 2021 for $2,250. By September 2025, the same machine listed at $3,200. That's a 42% cumulative increase, and most of it predates the 2025 tariff waves entirely.

Woodworking machinery has been climbing for years. The tariff announcements landed on top of an already steep curve, which is why "prices went up" and "tariffs made prices go up" are two different claims, and only brands with clean before-and-after data let you separate them. Festool is the only major brand that explicitly attributed its increase to trade costs at all.

The 2026 Cordless Wave: Smaller Than the Internet Said

For hand-held power tools, 2026 was noisier in forums than in reality. Stanley Black & Decker confirmed on its Q1 2026 earnings call a +4% price increase on DeWalt 20V MAX, FLEXVOLT, and Craftsman V20 lines, after absorbing roughly $800 million in tariff costs, according to Power Tool Insider. Four percent is real but modest.

Then came the viral claims of a "7–9% August increase." Power Tool Insider debunked that one directly: no August 1, 2026 tariff event exists for power tools. What actually happened is that Section 301-style tariffs took effect July 24, 2026, replacing an expiring flat 10% Section 122 tariff, at 10% for most partners and 12.5% for China, Vietnam, Thailand, Brazil, and Russia. On China-sourced tools that's roughly two and a half extra points at the border and maybe 1–1.5% at retail. A nudge, not a spike. (One caveat Power Tool Insider itself invites: it's an affiliate-supported blog, so treat its brand-exposure rankings as a starting point, not gospel.)

Where Used Beats New at Equal Money

Now the part I actually care about, because my shop budget has never survived contact with a catalog.

Used cabinet saws, including SawStop brake models, resell in the $800–$2,000+ range per Freebox estimates. I'll flag that Freebox is a resale app's estimator, not a marketplace survey, so treat those ranges as ballparks. But pair them with one historical data point from LumberJocks: in early 2022, a used 1.75 HP SawStop PCS with 52" extension and rolling base was considered reasonable at $1,600–$1,800.

Compare that to a new CNS contractor saw at $2,329 in July 2026, and the math gets interesting. If a clean used PCS still trades anywhere near those old-money levels, it beats the new contractor saw on both capacity and safety at less money. I couldn't verify current used SawStop asking prices, so I won't assert a present-day number. But the logic holds regardless, and here's the kicker: our earlier reporting established that no competitor has shipped flesh detection at consumer prices. A used SawStop is the only way to get that safety tech secondhand. Full stop.

There's one more wrinkle at the top end. The Powermatic PM2000B 3 HP with 30" fence lists at $5,092 on Powermatic's own site as of July 2026. The Harvey ALPHA HW110S-36Pro was on sale at $3,599. That puts the SawStop PCS at $3,881 a full $1,211 below the Powermatic and just $282 above the Harvey. At 3 HP cabinet scale, flesh detection is no longer the premium it used to be. If you've been assuming SawStop was out of reach at the cabinet tier, the market moved.

My Take From the Bench

If I were spending your money instead of mine, here's how I'd read all this. Entry-level saws: the panic was unwarranted, and the CTS price never moved. Cabinet tier: whether the increases were large we can't cleanly verify, but SawStop now prices aggressively against both Powermatic and Harvey, so shop the tier, not just the brand. Cordless: ignore the viral percentage claims, the real 2026 moves were in the low single digits, and a +4% DeWalt increase shouldn't rush anyone.

Prices will keep doing what prices do. A well-bought used saw at a fair number is the one move that's immune to the next announcement email.