President Trump's new tariffs on Canadian products are scheduled to take effect next week. Trump announced last month that he wanted a 50% tax on many Canadian imports - from clothing to building materials like plywood and cement. Both countries are in active trade negotiations today and hope to reach a deal before the deadline. But as Richard Haller from North Country Public Radio reports, the uncertainty is already causing stress for business owners and customers.
The scent of sawdust, diesel fumes and cedar sap hangs in the air at a lumber yard in Rensselaer Falls, New York, just 15 miles south of the Canadian border.
This business, JP Building Supply, stores and sells all types of building materials, including sheathing like plywood. It buys around a third of its lumber from Canada. James Putman, the owner, says that if these tariffs really do move forward, they are in trouble.
I mean, that's going to affect us tremendously. If things bump up 50%, that means we have to add on 50% because we've got to, obviously - we got to put it on to the customer, and that's just going to push everything else up.
For the past year and a half, the Trump administration has aggressively tariffed Canada. But after the Supreme Court ruled that Trump didn't have the authority to impose certain tariffs by executive order, the government had to refund around a hundred billion dollars. Now it's imposing new tariffs under a different provision that had never been used before. Across the border in Canada, Hank Vedder is a sales manager at a lumber business in Ottawa that ships 60% of its product to the U.S. He says the threat of these tariffs alone is already having an impact on his U.S. customers, like home builders and contractors.
They say, hey, if that 50% is coming in, I need to do one of two things. I'm going to either order today before the tariffs kick in or then I'm going to wait until there's relief in those tariffs.
Vedder says these tariffs are causing a domino effect, raising import costs on specific items, which then pushes companies to raise all of their prices.
So then that affects the contractor because he's trying to get this house built on time for his customer, and then that affects the supply chain because if the contractor is not ordering the material, then the supply chain is weakened.
In central New York, A.J. Wormuth owns a dairy farm and also chairs the Northeast Dairy Producers Association. He hopes the U.S. and Canada reach a better trade deal. But existing tariffs, like on steel and aluminum, stacked with the uncertainty, have already created economic pressure.
So a lot of people are building barns and a lot of people are, you know, investing in their operations, and it just raises the cost on everything - cement, steel. Anything you're doing in - using in a building project or anything is - those costs have escalated exponentially.
These new tariffs cover a slew of items coming out of Canada, everything from chandeliers to ice skates to dairy and alcohol. Amy Magnus is a customs broker based in Vermont and helps businesses calculate tariffs when shipping across the border. She says she's never seen anything like this before in her 40 years of experience.
I am telling my customers, please check the lists and see if you have any products that appear on those lists. If you do have, let's say, all these shipments of ice skates that you want to bring into the United States, bring them in right now.
Magnus says she hopes both countries work out a resolution. She's worried these new tariffs will create a colder relationship between Canada and the U.S. For NPR News, I'm Richard Haller.
