It's been eight months of adjusting and juggling to stay on top of U.S.-imposed tariffs, but Canadian business owners continue to be resilient and are sourcing more materials from countries other than our southern neighbour, according to a South Surrey-based trade management company.
PCB Global Trade Management president and CEO Greg Timm, whose company has been flooded with calls daily since American president Donald Trump first imposed the fees, said Canadians continue to adapt, despite the ever-changing tariff atmosphere.
His company offers the advice and services of customs and international logistics experts for importers and exporters on both sides of the border. Their website also has a dedicated tariff resources centre phone number and email people can contact, with the latest news in tariffs posted as well.
"It's an overwhelming time for us," Timm said, noting his company has trade experts and regulatory analysts who "spend their entire life trying to keep up with the the evolving trade environment."
"Tariff on, tariff off .... tariff up, tariff down — for us it's more than just a microphone announcement. It is actually programming and applying it to every client and every client's product, one by painful one."
Tariff changes can be 'very complex' for Canadian businesses
Timm said most business owners are often confused about what the tariffs are, and how they will affect their business.
"There's some some products that are less affected, and then there's some that are highly affected, and they're very complex now. In many cases what used to take us 20 minutes or half an hour to do now takes us six hours to do, especially as it relates to goods entering the United States."
The correct and most current government regulations must be applied, and that poses its own challenges, Timm noted: the kind of regulatory changes that used to take 18 months to be implemented take effect in more like 18 hours.
"The way the government rolls them out — not much preparation and quite a bit of ambiguity, quite a bit of interpretation," can make it difficult to understand.
"Our job is to give our best opinion of what it is, or to stop the goods from shipping and get a written opinion from government, which now can take two years. Clients have to ship and keep their business moving, so we're applying the best opinion we can. If there's ever been a time to use the services of a trade advisory, or trade consulting service, it's now," he said.
The most complex products to be shipped include things that are highly manufactured — things that have steel in them, aluminum in them, copper, things that might be components built with origins from various countries, Timm explained.
PCB Global Trade management has several clients who manufacture pieces that have inputs or components from 10 or 12 different countries from all over the world from the Netherlands to Germany, England, Korea, Japan and China.
"Then (the product) is manufactured and designed in Canada, and then shipped, and there's all kinds of formulas and rules for origin and those things are difficult ... they really are," Timm said, adding it's especially difficult for shippers, who are trying to make a deal with their client and sell at a certain price, only to find out after they've already made the deal that their input costs have increased because of duties or tariffs.
Any business involved with manufacturing, and any business dealing with auto parts likely face the most challenges, he continued.
"Anybody that has manufacturing components — and that could be a motor that goes into a conveyor system down in the U.S. — where it's a specialized assembly and a specialized design, with inputs from various places, those complex things — the highly manufactured products are the most difficult. The easiest ones are probably food products, where a tomato is a tomato."
Shipments coming from overseas to Canada are up
Despite the uncertain tariff atmosphere, Timm said his clients' shipments to the U.S., compared to the same period last year, are only down about six per cent, while "our shipments inbound to Canada are actually up from the same time last year."
"Now when I say that, we import goods into Canada from not just the United States, we import them from around the world from the 192 nations that are part of the World Trade Organization," Timm clarified. 'The U.S. shipments are almost static, just about the same, and other shipments coming from overseas, by sea freight or air freight, are up. ... Canadian importers and the Canadian economy is fairly resilient and robust," he noted.
"It appears to us that slowly, Canadians are starting to source from overseas instead of the U.S., especially on those complex products, but we still have long-trusted relationships in the United States and we still buy a lot of goods there."
In August, the Canadian government decided to drop any counter-tariffs specifically covered under CUSMA (the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement), Timm noted, which perhaps helped as well.
Last Friday (Sept. 19), the Canadian government launched public consultations on CUSMA, which facilitates free trade across North America; it is set for a joint review in 2026.
Where his company was receiving more than 140 calls a day, the past few weeks have quieted down a little, said Timm.
"Maybe we're back to a healthier discussion here, where we're negotiating away from the cameras and the microphones and and trying to come up with a good sustainable trade deal — we hope."
Enforcement on both sides of the border has also gotten stricter as both countries deal with what the tariffs entail, he added.
His best advice for Canadian businesses?
"Know before you go," Timm said. "Come to a trade adviser, get the information before you buy or before you sell as far upstream as you can, so you have certainty — or at least whatever certainty can be provided today — and know it might change, but we can only deal with what's in place right now."
He encouraged all business owners to do their research to understand if it's better to "buy that engine from the U.S.A., Korea, or the Netherlands, and understand trade agreements and transport costs and duties and the surtaxes and whatnot."
Businesses live on despite the uncertain, ever-changing trade climate, he said.
"Canadians are very resilient, and they're very creative ... and they're proving what we've always seen, is they can adjust."
