I was walking through a small cemetery last weekend when it hit me how quiet these places have become.
Not just the usual Sunday-afternoon stillness, but something deeper. Whole sections that used to fill up every year now sit half-empty, waiting for headstones that may never come. Turns out I’m not imagining things. America’s monument makers — those family businesses that have been carving names into granite for generations — are staring down what might be an existential crisis.
The Double Blow No One Saw Coming
Two massive forces are colliding at exactly the wrong moment for this quiet corner of American manufacturing: skyrocketing tariffs on imported granite and a cultural earthquake that’s pushing cremation rates through the roof.
I’ve talked to several owners lately, and the stress in their voices is something you don’t forget. These aren’t Wall Street types worrying about quarterly numbers. These are third and fourth-generation craftsmen who thought they had the most recession-proof business imaginable. Death, after all, is the one certainty.
Or at least it used to be.
When Your Raw Material Comes From Halfway Around the World
Here’s something most people never consider when they see a beautiful headstone: almost none of the granite comes from America anymore.
The really stunning stuff — the deep blacks, the aurora reds with their wild patterns, the absolute black that drinks in light — it all comes from places like India, China, Brazil, and Norway. Domestic quarries mostly closed decades ago because labor costs made them uncompetitive.
“God gave different parts of the world different yummies,” one Pennsylvania monument maker told me. “We have nothing like India’s aurora granite in this country. Nothing even close.”
That worked fine for decades. Ships brought containers full of rough blocks, craftsmen turned them into memorials, families had something permanent to visit. Everyone won.
Then came the tariffs.
From 29% to 59% Overnight
The numbers are brutal. One Cleveland monument builder told me his customs duties on Chinese containers jumped from about 29% last year to 59% this fall. That’s not a rounding error. That’s the difference between staying in business and closing the doors.
Many tried to pivot. They moved two-thirds of their supply chain to India, where rates were lower. For a while. Then those rates started climbing too.
The really maddening part? These businesses work on long lead times. A family orders a monument when someone dies. The granite might not arrive for months. If tariffs double in that window — which has happened repeatedly — the company eats the difference.
“We’re literally checking headlines every morning to see if we need to rush containers onto ships before new rates hit,” one operations manager told me. “It’s insane.”
Some are talking about adding clauses to contracts that let them adjust prices after the fact, but good luck explaining that to a grieving family.
Meanwhile, Americans Stopped Wanting What They Sell
Even without tariffs, this industry was already transforming.
When I was a kid, maybe one in ten funerals ended in cremation. Now? The five-year average just crossed 60%, and projections show it hitting nearly 80% in some regions soon. People scatter ashes in the mountains, at sea, in their gardens. They buy urns, not upright headstones.
Think about that shift. An entire manufacturing sector built around large, permanent granite markers suddenly finds seventy, eighty percent of its potential customers choosing something else entirely.
- 1960s: ~4% cremation rate
- 2000: ~25%
- 2024: >60%
- Projected 2030: >75%
That’s not evolution. That’s a revolution.
The Adaptation Game
So what do you do when your core product is becoming obsolete and your raw materials just doubled in price?
You get creative. Fast.
Some companies are expanding their territory — driving six hours for jobs they used to turn down at two. Others are buying competitors just to keep their shops busy. Many are pushing cremation memorials: smaller pedestals, garden stones, even “rainbow bridge” memorials for pets (apparently that’s now a thing).
One craftsman showed me a beautiful bench memorial that holds cremated remains inside. “People still want something,” he said. “Just not always the traditional upright stone their grandparents had.”
The Human Cost
Here’s what keeps me up thinking about this story: these aren’t faceless corporations. These are families who’ve done the same work for a hundred years in some cases.
The 75-year-old owner I spoke with in Pennsylvania — he’s not sure his business will survive another decade in recognizable form. His kids aren’t interested in taking over. The math doesn’t work anymore.
“Egyptians built pyramids,” he said quietly. “Now I’m not sure people even want a pebble.”
That line stuck with me. In our rush to make death cheaper, faster, less permanent, are we losing something important?
Where This Goes From Here
Nobody knows. Some think domestic granite production could come back if tariffs stay high enough long enough, though labor costs make that questionable. Others believe we’ll see massive consolidation — a few big players buying up the family shops.
Most likely? This becomes another story of American manufacturing adapting to global realities. Smaller, more specialized, focused on premium work rather than volume.
But walking through that quiet cemetery, seeing all those empty spaces where headstones should be, I couldn’t help feeling we lost something. Not just jobs or businesses, but the simple, physical act of saying: this person was here, and they mattered enough for something permanent.
The monument makers will adapt. They always have. But something about how we remember feels different now, and I’m not sure quieter is always better.
Next time you’re in an old cemetery, look at the dates on the stones. See how many people born in the 1800s have descendants still leaving flowers in 2025. Then walk to the new section and count how many fresh graves have nothing but grass.
The difference tells you everything about where we’re headed.
