{"id":172886,"date":"2025-09-27T11:36:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T11:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/172886\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T11:36:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T11:36:08","slug":"tariff-turmoil-costs-new-brunswick-companies-american-customers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/172886\/","title":{"rendered":"Tariff turmoil costs New Brunswick companies American customers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two New Brunswick businesses say changes to the U.S. tariff system are\u00a0forcing them to end shipments to American customers.<\/p>\n

Alicia Phillips, CEO of Educated Beards, a Fredericton-based male grooming products company, said the ongoing tariff turmoil with the United States means that ending shipments south was the only thing that made sense.<\/p>\n

“It is honestly making it nearly impossible to guarantee a smooth, affordable experience for American customers,” said Phillips.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We decided to just close temporarily and rather than risking delayed packages and surprise fees for people, we’ll reopen when we can, when it’s fair and we can provide a reliable service. We just can’t do that right now.”<\/p>\n

Alicia Nicholson, owner of Nackawick’s Upfront Cosmetics, said the decision to stop shipping to Americans wasn’t easy to make and wasn’t something she had ever thought would happen.<\/p>\n

But recent weeks have forced her hand, if only for her customers’ sake.<\/p>\n

“Some orders are getting halfway to the border and being turned around \u2026 before they’re ever processed,” said Nicholson.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The ones that do make it there to be processed, we’ve seen tariffs anywhere from 300 to 500 per cent\u00a0being charged on them with no justification behind it.”<\/p>\n

De minimis shipping<\/p>\n

The issue at the heart of the businesses’ decision not to ship products south is the Trump era suspension of duty-free de minimis shipping into the United States.<\/p>\n

Prior to Aug.\u00a029, any parcel sent to the United States that was sent to a consumer that had a value of less than $800 American dollars had duties, tariffs and taxes waived.<\/p>\n

But a July 30\u00a0executive order ended the practice.<\/p>\n

\"AThe issue at the heart of the businesses\u2019 decision not to ship products south is the Trump era suspension of duty-free de minimis shipping into the United States. (Alex Brandon\/The Associated Press)<\/p>\n

In the order, the Trump administration indicated the move was to fight the largely debunked issue of drug shipments from Canada into the United States.<\/p>\n

“The risks of evasion, deception, and illicit-drug importation are particularly high for low-value articles that have been eligible for duty-free de minimis treatment,” reads the executive order.<\/p>\n

In 2024,\u00a0American border officials seized 5,260 kilograms of drugs coming from Canada. That same year Canadian border officials seized 8,300 kilograms coming from the United States.<\/p>\n

Knock-on effects<\/p>\n

While Phillips acknowledges sales to the United States make up a relatively small portion of the company’s orders, the ongoing border friction is having a greater impact.<\/p>\n

“A lot of Canadian businesses rely on smooth cross-border transactions not just for selling a product, but for materials, for packaging, for expansion,” said Phillips.<\/p>\n

“When these barriers go up, it really limits both sides of the border.”<\/p>\n

Nicholson said about 30 per cent of her customers are American.<\/p>\n

\"APhillips said there is one thing that\u2019s needed before she would consider shipping south again: stability. (Carlo Allegri\/Reuters)<\/p>\n

She’s now looking at expanding the business in Canada to supplement the lost revenue, but that’s not a simple fix.<\/p>\n

“The U.S. market has about 10 times as many people as the Canadian marketplace,” said Nicholson.<\/p>\n

Phillips said one thing that’s needed before she would consider shipping south again is\u00a0stability.<\/p>\n

“It’s OK if there are changes, we can work with that. But the fast-paced changes where people can’t keep up, that is what’s causing the most difficulty right now.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two New Brunswick businesses say changes to the U.S. tariff system are\u00a0forcing them to end shipments to American…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":["post-172886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}