Edmonton business owners worried about Trump’s 25 per cent tariffs

Posted February 1, 2025 5:54 pm.
Last Updated February 2, 2025 10:39 am.
Tariffs on imported Canadian goods is coming into effect on Tuesday and some Edmonton business owners worry about the impact.
“Because for him it’s good, chaos is good anytime he does something like – if it’s crazy it’s good for him because when he does something less crazy people go ‘oh he’s not crazy anymore,” said Jeff, Edmontonian.
Edmonton business owner of Hemp Heals and Earthing Alberta, Jen Tyler, says some of the vitamin e essential oils for her business are initially sourced in Canada and she only pays around 200 dollars.
“Shortly after covid, because it was a two-year cycle, it went up to – I believe almost $500 which made no sense whatsoever,” said Tyler.
Because of the price hike, she decided to outsource the vitamin e ingredient from the States, which saved her almost 200 dollars, but that might not be the case anymore
“Now with tariff on top of that, it’s gonna make it out of the league for a lot of people to be able to still have the product and not pay almost maybe close to double – three-quarters to a double more,” said Tyler.
Economist Moshe Lander says the tariff could disrupt the production of Canadian goods and cause a domino effect in the job industry
“If I’m not gonna get as much money, maybe I don’t wanna do this anymore, so I might scale back my production,” said Moshe.” If I scale back my production, I lay off workers, or I might shut her up entirely.”
Lander says this tariff is not just going to hurt Canadians, but it is going to hurt Americans as well as this is going to remove the free will in the free market, however, a retaliatory tariff isn’t going to help either.
“This is not a case of two wrongs makes it right, it’s two wrongs make even a bigger wrong, it’s almost like a mutually assured destruction that the whole point of the free trade agreement is to make sure that these things don’t happen because nobody going to walk out of this looking good,” said Lander.
Lander adds that Canadians could see the price change once the new supply of US goods arrive in Canada after the tariffs and depending if ingredients are sourced from Canada or the states chains like Chipotle, Krispy Kreme and Chik-fil-a might also be affected.
According to the white house, tariffs will take effect on Tuesday, February 4 with 25 per cent being imposed on Canadian goods with a 10 per cent tariff on energy.