Small businesses are facing difficult decisions as the U.S. is set to begin the ban on certain Canadian imports. Jeremie Charron reports. <\/p>\n
OTTAWA \u2014 As Canada looks to strengthen trade ties with the European Union amid its ongoing trade dispute with the United States, some small businesses are also looking overseas for new markets.<\/p>\n
SFR Distillery in Ottawa had planned to expand into the U.S. market, but that strategy has been upended by new measures from Washington that will ban imports of certain Canadian products.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs of Tuesday, it will actually be illegal for us to export our goods to the United States because of the decisions they\u2019ve made down there,\u201d said Adam Brierley, SFR Distillery\u2019s general manager and master distiller.<\/p>\n
Until recently, expanding south of the border was part of the distillery\u2019s growth strategy.<\/p>\n
Its flagship whiskey was developed as a bourbon alternative and was put on LCBO shelves as bourbon was removed from Ontario stores.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur flagship whiskey was intended as a bourbon replacement,\u201d Brierley said.<\/p>\n
After recent domestic growth, the company had planned to make a major push into the U.S. market. Now, Brierley is looking to Europe instead.<\/p>\n
The distillery plans to attend several large European trade shows throughout the year, where Brierley hopes to meet with distributors and importers.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully we can send out whole sea containers of whiskey over to Europe all at once,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
While some businesses may be able to diversify their markets, others could face significant challenges from Washington\u2019s latest measures.<\/p>\n
International trade lawyer Barry Appleton said the import ban represents a major escalation, particularly for businesses operating in the affected sectors.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a major escalation (to a) small percentage of our economy, (but a) big impact if you\u2019re in one of those sectors,\u201d Appleton said. <\/p>\n
The U.S. import ban, set to take effect Tuesday, covers a list of Canadian products, including beer and other alcohol, whey protein, molasses and motorcycles.<\/p>\n
Appleton said an import ban presents a particularly difficult barrier for Canadian companies.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith an import ban you\u2019re talking about a wall, and a wall is a lot more difficult to be able to circumvent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Canadian brewers are among those facing yet another challenge as they too, prepare to be shutout of the U.S. market.<\/p>\n
The industry has already been dealing with higher costs for aluminum cans, adding further pressure to producers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat has been a huge, huge increase in cost and brewers have been working very, very hard to try to absorb those costs, but there\u2019s no end in sight,\u201d said Richard Alexander, president of Beer Canada.<\/p>\n
For Brierley and SFR Distillery, however, the shift toward Europe offers another potential path for growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s nice to know there\u2019s another larger customer, as big as the United States, that would be very happy to take our goods,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Small businesses are facing difficult decisions as the U.S. is set to begin the ban on certain Canadian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":912400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[712,49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-912399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-apple-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912399","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=912399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/912400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=912399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=912399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=912399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}