Some businesses in Ontario are bracing for tarrifs but pledging steadfastness after Canadian and U.S. trade negotiators came close, but ultimately failed at the 11th hour to reach a trade agreement Friday night.
After weeks of threats and a three-day deadline extension, the White House followed through on a 50 per cent tariff on roughly $28 billion of Canadian goods, including steel, aluminum and auto exports.
Kimberly Turner-Briscoe said she’s had countless sleepless nights — including on Friday — trying to figure out how to keep her business going since the start of Trump’s trade war.
As president of a Scarborough-based steel fastener supplier and distributor, she says she’s had to make tough choices over the past few years, including pivoting business away from the U.S. and laying off some of her staff.
While she’s disappointed by the tariffs, especially Canada’s 25 per cent sectional tariffs on fasteners, Turner-Briscoe said she’s proud negotiators walked away from a bad deal.
“Don’t back down. No deal is better than a bad deal,” she said as a message to the government. “Business is not for the faint of heart. It used to be a lot more fun than it is right now.”
Items subject to the new tariffs represent about nine per cent of Ontario’s total exports to the U.S. in 2025, according to Statistics Canada.
Prime Minister Carney said at a press conference Saturday morning that the U.S. proposed new terms that were “uneconomic, unfair and undermine the net benefits to Canada.”
Canada is “reluctantly” taking the step to introduce retaliatory tariffs “dollar for dollar” across several sectors, including dairy, steel, paper and electronics, after Labour Day, he said.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford slammed the proposed trade agreement with the United States as a ‘bad deal’ for the province’s steel and auto sectors. Ford said he supports Prime Minister Mark Carney’s decision to suspend negotiations and that the province will help workers and businesses who now face a 50% tariff from the U.S.
Unifor national president Lana Payne said she supported the government’s position, even though some Canadian workers have already been “punished” by tariffs over the past 18 months.
Representing about 320,000 workers, Unifor is Canada’s largest private sector union.
“What we have seen over and over again from the Trump administration is demands for concession after concession,” Payne told reporters on Saturday afternoon. “The concessions were so great that our Canadian negotiators had to walk away.”
She continued: “I believe that that was the right decision. That doesn’t mean we’re in an easy time right now. It’s going to be a difficult time for our country and for working people.”
Canadians now need to present a united front, Payne said.
“I believe we were always going to end up in this place,” she said. “We are now at a place where we have to draw this line in the sand. We are going to have to push back as hard as we can, as strategically as we can.”
Canada didn’t start trade war, but will win: Ford
At a news conference Saturday, Ford told Ontarians to “stay strong” and said he was “glad” the prime minister didn’t sign the deal with the U.S. He now hopes Canada’s premiers will stand together as a united front.
“It was a bad deal. It was a bad deal for Ontario, it was a bad deal for the auto sector and steel sector and manufacturing sector,” he said.
“We never started this fight, but I can assure you we’re going to win this fight.”
While the weeks ahead may be tough, Ford said the province’s diversified economy would be able to withstand the challenges and that Ontario will support workers in impacted sectors.
Giles Gherson, president of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, said the tariffs will be a “direct hit” to jobs and investments in the region. He urged the provinces and federal government to coordinate action against the tariffs.
“Canadians showed what unity looks like — buying Canadian, travelling in Canada and supporting our local industries,” he said. “We need to turn our economic protest into a powerful economic pact.”
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow is urging residents to support each other by shopping local as Canadian businesses now face 50% tariffs from the United States. The mayor voiced support for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s decision to suspend trade talks with the U.S. and said Canadians will ‘”fight back.”
Turner-Briscoe said she’s seen a major shift in her customers as Canadians focus on buying more locally.
“We can’t be so dependent on the U.S. If nothing else, this is teaching us a lesson,” she said.
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow echoed those sentiments, saying at an event on Saturday that the city would use its purchasing power to buy local. She said while the U.S. is losing jobs, Toronto is on track to create thousands of new jobs.
“If people bully us and try to weaken us, we’re not gonna back down,” she said. “This is the time for us to come together … and really seriously look at how we can create local jobs.”
Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown said “no deal is better than a bad deal” in a post to social media platform X.
“We built this country’s auto sector and the supply chains that depend on it over 80 years, and we are not signing it away or backing down,” he said. “Now is the time for every level of government, industry, and every Canadian to stand shoulder to shoulder in defence of Canadian workers, businesses, and our economy.”
Almost 3,000 workers are currently out of a job due to a Stellantis Assembly Plant shutdown in 2023, Brown said. Earlier this month, a national union said it was told by Stellantis that it was seriously considering the closure and sale of the Brampton Assembly Plant.
“Brampton knows better than almost anyone what’s at stake if we get this wrong,” Brown said.
Trade war will be costly: experts
The Canada-U.S. trade war will be “very costly” for Canadians, said Ian Lee, associate professor at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business.
Higher prices, higher unemployment and increased bankruptcies might be on the horizon according to Ontario-focused research, he said.
“This is not going to be a free lunch for Canadians,” he told CBC News on Saturday.
Impacted sectors may experience layoffs or, in worst case scenarios, business closures, said David Soberman, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.
Soberman said he had hoped for some sort of deal to provide Canadians with relief.
“We’re negotiating with an elephant next door and we’re a mouse. If the elephant decides to roll over, the mouse gets squished,” he said.
Soberman questioned whether standing up to the United States was the right approach.
“The government has said they’re going to do [retaliatory tariffs] and it’s sort of consistent with this elbows up idea, but it actually hurts us,” Soberman said.
In the meantime, he hopes Canada will return to the negotiation table to get the best deal possible. While Canada and Ontario are working to diversify exports, those deals take time to fix the current issues at hand, he said.
