The Thunder Bay Community Economic Development Commission has partnered with the Thunder Bay Chamber of Commerce to compile a list of local businesses that export to the U.S. as part of an economic defense preparation strategy.
Chamber president Charla Robinson said emerging tariffs are the most pressing challenge for businesses on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border. The purpose of the list is to help better understand the impacts on the local economy and quickly communicate with those most affected in the months ahead.
“We expect it’s going to be a pretty dynamic environment over the next number of months, with lots of back and forth,” she said.
Robinson called the situation “very fluid,” which spurred the CEDC and the Chamber to connect with the impacted businesses that import and export to the U.S. which have been paying close attention to the tariff developments.
Denise Atkinson, owner of Tea Horse, said she is already making adjustments for her Thunder Bay-based artisinal tea company.
“On my website for E-commerce, I’ve stated that I’m not exporting to the U.S. until we have an understanding of exactly what (the U.S.) is going to do,” Atkinson said.
“We don’t do tons of exporting, but we do have a couple of good clients. I export products to California and New York. We are mostly domestic and scaling up for future development — and expanding our offerings in the U.S. was on our radar, but now we don’t know,” she said, adding that the financial impact on her company would be a “significant chunk.”
Gear Up for Outdoors president Jon Wynn is taking a wait-and-see approach to possible U.S. tariffs and retaliatory levies from Canada.
“We’re more concerned about this stuff coming in, how much that’s going to be taxed to our distributors, and how much that’s going to cost the consumer in the end run,” Wynn said.
He explained that tariffs added to any of their products coming from the U.S. will impact the store.
“Somebody’s got to pay for it and unfortunately, it’s going to probably be the consumer because a lot of companies just can’t take that kind of 25-per-cent hit on their bottom line.”
Wynn said most of their prices are dictated by the manufacturer retail pricing and that’s going to increase.
“All our pricing will be affected and it’s a huge burden on us because its all going to have a blend with 25 per cent added to some pricing. We’ve got to change everything,” he said. “Then what if Trump backs it off and lowers it or raises it? It’s just a ton of work, so we’re not doing anything until I find out what’s going on.”
Robinson said they expect that there could be specific carve-outs of what the tariffs are, and differing rules or counter-tariffs that Canada might be putting on.
“We need to get our head around who those businesses are and where they fall in the industrial sector,” she said. “It’s really about being a little more flexible in understanding those local impacts, feeding that to the Ontario and Canadian Chambers and to our members of federal and provincial Parliament so that everybody has a real understanding that this is a problem nationally, provincially and locally.”
Robinson expects the provincial and federal governments will be having those discussions about any counter-tariffs or carve-outs that they want to try to push for as they’re negotiating things and said, “Everything is just going to be really bumpy.”
