Business leaders in upstate New York say they are bracing for the effects of new tariffs on Canadian products — and they warn that prices will rise if the tariffs actually materialize.
Factories would face higher costs for goods like aluminum and wood pulp. Fuel, natural gas and electricity that flow over the borders with Quebec and Ontario would become more expensive. Farmers would pay more for fertilizer, government and business leaders said.
While Trump’s position remains in flux this week, factories and farms upstate say they have to prepare for the worst.
Garry Douglas, president and CEO of the North Country Chamber of Commerce, said 20% of workers in Plattsburgh and its surrounding county are either employed by Canadian companies or rely on cross-border trade.
“One of the great advantages the U.S. has had from free trade with Canada, and in integration of our two economies, has been making end-products less costly on the global market,” he said. “It's gonna be awfully hard to divorce that.”
New York state firms import almost $23 billion worth of goods from Canada each year, according to the Canadian government — and trade supports an estimated 520,000 jobs in the Empire State.
President Donald Trump announced Monday he would place 25% tariffs on all goods from Canada and Mexico and also doubled the levy on goods from China to 20%. After stock markets dropped and other countries began to retaliate, Trump on Thursday announced he was postponing tariffs on Canada and Mexico until April 2.
Earlier in the week, he made his case for the new levies during a speech to Congress.
“If you don't make your product in America, however, under the Trump administration, you'll pay a tariff, and in some cases a rather large one,” the Republican president said. “Other countries have used tariffs against us for decades, and now it's our turn to start using them against those other countries.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul said tariffs amounted to a tax that she estimated would cost families more than $1,000 a year. The Democratic governor convened a roundtable with agricultural leaders on Tuesday.
Many farm supplies — including wood chips and the common fertilizer, potash — come from north of the border, Hochul said.
”This is a real, real hit on our families at a time when we were promised affordability,” she said.
One of the people who met with Hochul was Kevin Ellis, chief executive of the Upstate Niagara Cooperative, a consortium of dairy farmers that runs its own processing facilities. Ellis said some of the supplies used to make cheese and ice cream are imported, and “increased costs to procure these critical supplies, as well as any retaliatory tariffs on our exported dairy products, will inevitably result in a negative financial impact to our cooperative farmer-owners.”
Canadian officials responded by slapping new levies on around $100 billion of U.S. goods. Tom Clark, the Canadian consul general in New York, traveled to Albany last month and warned state lawmakers that the energy sector would experience some of the first impacts of any trade war.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford threatened to add a 25% surcharge on electricity exported from his province into New York, Michigan and Minnesota starting next week.
“Honestly, it really bothers me we have to do this,” Ford said on CNN. He said Trump was causing “mass chaos” with his tariffs.
New York used around 4,000 gigawatt hours of power — about a quarter of what’s produced annually by the Hoover Dam — in 2023, according to the New York Independent System Operator, which oversees the state’s electric grid. Officials are in touch with their Canadian counterparts and NYISO “anticipates having adequate supplies to meet expected demand on the system,” according to spokesperson Kevin Lanahan.