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Tax relief for affordable housing developments took a step forward in the state capitol last week.

The General Assembly’s Housing Committee voted Thursday to advance a bill that would create a 3 percent sales tax on construction materials available to anyone building either more than 50 affordable units or a housing development where at least 1 in 5 of the homes being created are affordable.

That would be a 335-basis-point reduction in the sales tax rate for these developers, from the state’s 6.35 percent existing sales tax.

The legislation comes as President Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico loom in the background. The former supplies large amounts of lumber used in Connecticut’s construction industry while the latter is a key supplier of the gypsum needed to make drywall.

It also comes after a larger pandemic-era acceleration in construction materials and labor costs, one that doesn’t seem likely to be reversed any time soon and which has significantly raised costs on all developers at the same time that financing costs have jumped to 10-year highs.