Edmonton businesses, government explore ways to minimize effects of incoming U.S. tariffs

An aerial image of downtown Edmonton on Dec. 5, 2024. (Cam Wiebe / CTV News Edmonton)

Incoming U.S. tariffs will strike the local economy and the prices of goods, but Edmonton businesses and the federal government are trying to find ways to both endure them and lessen their effects.

American President Donald Trump signed executive orders Saturday evening to hit Canada with duties of 10 per cent on energy and 25 per cent on everything else after promising to do so after his election victory late last year.

The Canadian government is placing 25 per cent tariffs on hundreds of goods from the U.S. in response to the steep American levies.

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Ottawa released a detailed list of the retaliatory tariffs on $30 billion in goods on Sunday, the day after Trump imposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China.

Both the U.S. tariffs and Canada’s response to them are slated to begin on Tuesday.

Malcolm Bruce, the chief executive officer of Edmonton Global, says news of the tariffs have “been a significant shock to Canada’s ability to conduct economic activities” and that local businessmen are “still trying to figure out what exactly this is going to mean to them as an individual business.”

“One thing for sure, though, this will change our working relationship, be that exports into the U.S or imports in from the U.S., and that’s going to have more than likely a very negative impact on our current economy,” Bruce told CTV News Edmonton on Sunday.

Randy Boissonnault, the Member of Parliament for Edmonton Centre, said he and many others were hoping Trump would “decide to do something else” at the last minute, but that isn’t the case, so “we’re in a whole new world now” and that means standing up for Canada’s sovereignty.

“I’ve got constituents telling me (personally) that we have to push back,” Boissonnault told CTV News Edmonton.

“They are in favour of the tariffs. They’re in very much in favour of one wave, two waves, three waves, and they want to make sure that Americans get the message that if you push Canada around, Canada will fight back.”

Bruce said the conversation around exploring new markets for Canada goods is “always going on” and that the impending trade war with the U.S., which also involves Mexico and China, “may be an opportunity to really look at our national strategy on export and trade.”

The head of Edmonton Global, a foreign direct investment and international business development agency that represents 14 area municipalities, said Canada can “really start to mobilize around how do we diversify our economy through different areas to export or our different export market,” referencing interest in Alberta energy from markets outside the western Hemisphere.

“A great example I can give you is we have a series of products that are ready to go if we can figure out a way to move them from the Edmonton region to Japan or to Korea,” Bruce said.

“Right now, we lack that infrastructure in the middle, and I think this might be an opportunity to start to build out that infrastructure.”

Like the federal government’s response during the COVID-19 pandemic in using different measures to provide financial help, Boissonnault said while the “scope and scale” of the tariffs threat is still being determined,

“We are going to make sure that Canadian businesses get through this.”

“I’m old enough to remember tariffs,” Boissonnault said. “Before the first NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), we had tariffs, and we’ve just had 40 years of not being used to them and not having to work with them, and having a free trade agreement that has benefited the Americans and has benefited Canadians.

“Now it’s like that movie Back to the Future. We’re going to have to weather the storm together.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Shelby Clarke