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For nearly a century, John Dioguardi’s family has been crafting custom headstones and other memorials for the Rome Monument in western Pennsylvania. Recently he wondered how much time his business had left.
Dioguardi has been trying to adapt for more than a decade as the increase in cremations has hit demand for the traditional headstones with which his company has become synonymous. This year, they were dealt another blow: President Donald Trump’s sweeping and high tariffs, which have driven up the cost of granite shipped to American cemeteries from around the world.
“I hope everything works out,” said Dioguardi. “I have no idea if it will be.”
Rome Monument is part of a group of small, family-run companies that produce memorial products that address the dual challenges of donations and cremations. Members of the blue-collar industry are struggling to survive the social, political and economic changes that are upsetting their livelihoods.
“A slap in the face”
As Dioguardi watched the White House’s trade relationship with China falter in recent months, he moved two-thirds of his supply chain out of the Asian country. Most of it went to India, which had a relatively lower tariff rate most of the year.
Craftsman works on the gravestone with compressed air.
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Dioguardi said moving production to the U.S. would likely still be more expensive — even with new tariffs — because of higher labor costs. There’s another simple reason to look internationally: Some types of granite, like the multicolored aurora found in India, only come from certain regions abroad.
“God has given certain treats to different parts of the world,” Dioguardi said. “There is nothing like this in our country.”
Trump’s levies have changed the industry’s bottom line, leaving companies struggling to contain the additional costs.
In September 2024, Jim Milano of Milano Monuments paid approximately 29% duties and taxes on a container that arrived at his Cleveland-based company from China. A year later, that rate almost doubled to 59%.
He has spoken with other commemorative monument suppliers about adding an addendum to bulk orders telling buyers that the price could be adjusted later depending on whether tariff rates change. Milano said he and many colleagues would pay the tariffs out of their own pockets for now. As a result, he took a pay cut.
“There have just been so many crazy things happening in the last few years,” said Milano, whose company has been around for half a century. “But this customs thing was like a punch in the gut.”
In recent months, Milano rushed to communicate with his order controller when he saw a headline about higher duties to ensure his containers went into the water before they went into effect.
Milano’s showroom and a memorial created by the company.
Courtesy: Jim Milano
Since special products are manufactured in the monument industry, the lead time is usually several weeks or months. Importers may see significantly different duty rates as the White House adjusts its trade policies between the time customers first order commemorative products and the actual shipment of the granite to the United States
“The uncertainty part is the hardest part that we have to contend with,” said Nathan Lange, president of Monument Builders of North America, a trade group that represents hundreds of companies with an average lifespan of more than seven decades.
Granite wholesalers also had to realign their sales practices. At PS Granite, based in Kentucky, the operations manager is Parthi Damo said they had postponed printing next year’s annual marketing materials because they were unsure whether tariff rates could change again, which would mean prices would have to be adjusted. Damo said he could move to creating new documents every 60 days if prices need to be continually updated.
Trump has argued that foreign countries, or in some cases the companies that import their products, should absorb the tariffs. The data shows that companies have largely absorbed the cost increases in the short term.
empty stone tombstones and grave slabs in a rural outdoor granite workshop.
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But memorial creators said narrower margins and smaller volumes make it harder to cover costs than it would be for large retailers. Because companies work with buyers who experience emotions related to death, industry representatives must be particularly sensitive in deciding whether to pass the costs on to consumers.
“It’s hard,” Milano said. “We can’t go back to a grieving family and say, ‘You know what, we have to add another $1,000 to your family’s funeral service to cover the tariffs.'”
A changing business
Even before the tariffs increased, the industry was busy adjusting to a future with less traditional funerals.
According to the Cremation Association of North America, the five-year cremation rate in the U.S. has risen to over 60% in 2024, compared to under 40% a decade and a half earlier. The organization estimates that in an average year between 2025 and 2029, more than two out of three bodies will be cremated.
Dioguardi has considered expanding the work radius around his Pennsylvania headquarters to spur demand for gravesite products, a broader trend that he says has led to a wave of acquisitions in the industry. Dioguardi and his colleagues have highlighted alternatives such as pedestal memorials to people commemorating a burned loved one.
He has also worked on less conventional memorials: Dioguardi recently helped a cemetery install a “rainbow bridge” memorial containing the ashes of pets.
“Cremation has changed our business tremendously,” Dioguardi said. “It created new opportunities. It closed some other doors.”
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If memorial builders have to raise prices to reflect the tariffs, Milano fears that could encourage more consumers to choose cremations. Apart from granite, he said levies on production materials also cut into profits.
Certainly Canada’s heritage industry is feeling the heat more acutely, with the five-year average cremation rate expected to exceed 80%. Dioguardi said granite producers he worked with in America’s northern neighbor had not raised prices because of the tariffs, given shrinking domestic demand.
Dioguardi said his family business should be on solid footing for another decade, but he questions whether it can survive in its current state beyond that. At the same time, the 75-year-old knows that the company’s fate depends in part on whether people want to send a memory to their loved ones.
Comparing the pyramids chosen by the Egyptians with today’s trend of spreading the ashes somewhere without marking, Dioguardi isn’t exactly sanguine. Part of the challenge, he and others in the industry say, is proving that any type of commemorative product is worth the investment.
“Forget building the pyramid,” Dioguardi said. “I don’t even know if they want a pebble.”
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