I think I'm probably best placed to answer that question.
Yes, we have already accessed the strategic response fund and we are using it. I can tell you how we're using it. It is to increase our competitiveness to try to take some of that work back that we've lost to the EU. It's not really getting anything back from the United States, and I'll tell you why that is. It's because the tariff is now the problem. It's not our competitiveness and it's not our efficiencies. Now the burden is on our clients. The burden is that as soon as they buy a mould from us, either they're going to pay the 10% tariff or we're going to absorb it.
We're trying to be more competitive in a world that has nothing to do with competitiveness at this point. It's not going to solve the problem. Will it allow us to push the problem down the road a little bit? It will, maybe once we get this behind us, but right now the major problem is that clients are asking us every day to not only match the price but beat the price, and now we have this 10% or 15% tariff on top of us.
One thing that we haven't talked about during this meeting and you have to understand is that for us to get to the 10% tariff, we have to buy U.S. steel. U.S. steel comes at a premium because of all the bad decisions that our American friends have made, but we also get penalized for bringing in that U.S. steel. This government ignores the fact that this continues to put us at a disadvantage. It's punitive. They're not countertariffs; they're punitive tariffs. They only continue to erode our position in trying to be in a competitive world. Buying new machines and making our plant beautiful, we're doing that, but at some point, we have to deal with the fact that if we're not profitable, we're not profitable.
Those decisions are coming down sooner and quicker. I honestly think the decision here is that we need to start to dive into the problem. There are solutions. We need the Canadian government to fight on our behalf. It's not going to happen here in Ottawa. It's going to happen in Washington. We need a timetable. We need to start to work together.
I'm going to be honest with you. We are already looking at hiring consultants ourselves because we don't think we're getting anywhere.