Trade experts say if new U.S. tariffs of up to 50 per cent are enacted on Wednesday, consumers in Canada will likely feel the impact as cost increases for goods crossing the border ripple through the economy.
“If you’re an American manufacturer, you don’t want to be paying 50 per cent on any sort of machine parts or anything like that that you’re bringing in,” says Joy Nott, partner of trade and customs at KPMG Canada.
“It’s consumers who are at the store shelf with their wallet in hand making the decision as to whether or not they’re going to buy that product. So for manufacturers, they have to find that sweet spot between recovering their costs and remaining profitable, but at the same time, not losing customers. So it’s a give and take.”
Tariffs are essentially taxes paid on imported products, meaning U.S. tariffs on Canadian imports are ultimately first covered by American businesses and consumers.
U.S. President Donald Trump launched a trade war in March 2025 with sweeping tariffs on imports from virtually all countries, including Canada, with specific Canadian sectors targeted, including steel and aluminum, forestry and lumber products and the auto industry.
Trump’s latest round of tariffs targets Canadian dairy products, alcoholic beverages and further automotive and parts tariffs due to what the administration called Canada’s “discriminatory” trade practices within each sector.
Trump signed three executive orders last month outlining the new tariffs to be imposed on Aug. 19, with each order including a separate index of hundreds of additional products that would face these new tariffs ranging from Canadian wine and beer to hockey sticks and other sporting goods, milk and cream, honey, furniture and cement.
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Global News at 6 Toronto: June 30, 2026 -
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U.S. tariffs are paid first by Americans, but if those products cross the Canada-U.S. border after those tariffs are charged, like with many manufactured goods, they could be hit by those tariffs multiple times before winding up on store shelves here and in the U.S.
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This means consumers on both sides of the border could wind up paying higher prices for goods if businesses pass along these extra costs to maintain their profit margins.
“In the majority of cases, we’re talking about components, ingredients and other items that are being used by U.S. manufacturers in the production of something in the United States that possibly could come back to Canada,” says John Boscariol, co-leader and partner in the international trade and investment law group at McCarthy-Tétrault.
“The U.S. manufacturer has to somehow, if they’re going to continue to source that product from Canada, absorb that price increase or certainly try and at least get some of it back in terms of a higher price to its consumers.”
“It may be exporting either a finished product or another component or sub-component or ingredient to Canada. And so, in that way, Canadians get hit indirectly with these tariffs.”
Among the exhaustive list of goods that could wind up being hit with the new 50 per cent tariffs, Boscariol says he expects finished automotive products, including parts and vehicles, would potentially be more expensive for consumers here and in the U.S. because they cross the border multiple times during the manufacturing process.
He also says this could be a similar situation for finished wood products like furniture and components, food ingredients that use Canadian dairy and honey, as well as sporting goods manufactured using Canadian components.
Nott also highlights how plastics and related products, including resins, are a focus of these new tariffs.
“So just imagine for a second, an empty shampoo bottle. The shampoo bottle was made here in Canada and the empty shampoo bottle goes into the States. It’s filled with shampoo and then comes back to Canada to be sold,” she says.
“Business means selling to a customer. And if that customer is not going to be willing to take a large price hike for any reason, whether that be for tariffs, the price of oil, it doesn’t matter.”
Nott also says that vehicles and parts could be subject to many different tariffs under these that could compound costs quickly as they cross the Canada-U.S. border repeatedly. That’s because they are subject to automotive-specific tariffs on top of added costs for a wide range of plastic products used in automotive manufacturing.
“At the very beginning of an automotive product or a part … you might have, for example, plastic resin that’s moving between the two countries. That is now caught. So is it a car part per se? No, but are there manufacturing inputs that are going to eventually end up in a car part? Yes. So that’s what’s caught this time,” says Nott.
“If you stop to think about it, how many things are made of plastic? And when you start to think about that, the list really grows.”
Nott adds that many other sectors, such as electronics, machinery and machinery parts, could also face higher costs from these plastic tariffs because it is so widely used in manufacturing and finished products.
Jesse Goldman, partner of international trade at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, says consumers could be hit indirectly by these new tariffs in the form of higher prices for some products, but the broader impact to the Canadian economy will be far more substantial and costly to consumers.
“That has effects in terms of their employment, their productivity, their ability to invest, their access to capital. For the U.S. tariffs, if we look at the effects on Canadian consumers, it’s really the diminishment of the Canadian economy overall that I think people will notice over a period of time.”
They have marked the news video as private so nobody can watch it. Not very nice work, Global.
Most hated, destructive, tyrannical “man” on earth or anywhere!
I hope any new tariffs hit Quebec the hardest. Supply management is a main reason for these new tariffs.
Isn’t it about time for that one idiot to make a comment mentioning Pierre and talk about export tariffs on energy and say everyone else is MAGA?
He is usually here all day saying the same stupid SHlT.
It has been 18 months of non-stop tariff propaganda, and the only change for Canadians during that time was excessive duties during the reciprocal tariffs that we paid to the Canadian government.
Other than that, nothing has changed.
We have been dealing with inflation and shrinkflation for about the same amount of time as Liberal’s have been in power.
I never had confidence in Dominic Leblanc as he was found guilty in 2018for serious ethics violations when he awarded a lucrative surf clam license to a close family friend.
Global News is spreading misinformation just like they did during the pandemic.
“So just imagine for a second, an empty shampoo bottle. The shampoo bottle was made here in Canada and Canadians collect their empty shampoo bottles goes into the States. It’s filled with shampoo and then comes back to Canada to be sold,”
We don’t collect empty shampoo bottles and send them back to the manufacturer and they don’t fill used shampoo bottles.
She is Nott very smart and tells big lies.
We don’t have tariffs on goods coming to Canada it’s American consumers that will suffer
Writer has wrong slant in his premise
Alberta should not help Elbows Up mainly eastern Canadians with these new tariffs. Oil and Gas is at a low level and isn’t going up. They folks didn’t support the Oil and Gas Industry when Trudeau was attacking it
Carney can’t pull the trigger on anything. Totally useless. All sizzle and no steak.
Trump v. China = Trump lost
Trump v. Iran = Trump lost
Trump v. Greenland = Trump lost
So… in an effort to look like a tough guy he is going to punch down on Canada. Just say no.
Kick Joestra out of Canada and prepare to take the hit.
Hitting us will cost him in the November mid-terms. As such it would be preferable to make a stand and loose in the short term than capitulate to a bully by signing a bad deal that will make us more reliant and subservient in the years ahead.
As a Canadian, all I can say is you never give in to a bully, and I am looking forward to Doug Ford’s latest move in all of this!
The cost to produce goes up, the demand is smaller, so the profit disappears, or production slows to reduce supply.
Keep in mind, the cost we pay for US furniture made with Canadian wood goes up, because of the tariff on the wood. Then the US pays another tariff on the furniture that has Canadian coverings. Their costs will always be higher than Canadian costs. Trump is still hurting the average American.
We supply aluminium (tariff), they make the cans. We print the cans (tariff) the US will pay way more for their US beer than we pay for our beer.
Why would costs be expected to go up? With the same or similar supply but reduced demand, they would actually go down.
Oh well
I hope evey single Canadian loses their job, their home and everything else
After almost 15yrs of decline extreme consequences is what it appears its going to take for Canadians to pull their heads out of their back ends
I’m so tired of the US whining that we took American alcohol off the shelves…..so put them back on. Doesn’t mean Canadians will buy it! Buy Canada! Boycott the US!
tRump and his fascist party will tank the whole worlds economy just like Herbert Hoover did.
Murica enjoy yer phat fukk.
He is a true economic genius..not!
We’ve been gouged for decades, and customers always carried whatever burden the retailers passed along. I remember locals were crossing the border to buy their cars in the USA because even after the exchange rate and tax it was still cheaper than buying it here in Canada. That’s something to think about. My relatives still cross the border to buy their eggs, milk, meat and gas in the stateside, but this new tariff could be the final nail in Canada’s economic coffin.
“Tariffs are essentially taxes paid on imported products, meaning U.S. tariffs on Canadian imports are ultimately first covered by American businesses and consumers.”
WRONG!
They are ALWAYS covered by consumers. Businesses don’t really pay any fees or taxes, they just jack up the prices of their products to get even.