The United States and Canada are falling deeper into what\u2019s being called a trade war after negotiations between the two countries failed on Friday. Now, economists, contractors and even farmers are expressing frustration with the escalating uncertainty.<\/p>\n
The U.S. is imposing 50% tariffs on more than $20 billion worth of Canadian goods, including cement, steel, lumber and even commercial goods like clothing, furniture and hockey sticks.<\/p>\n
The new taxes are prompting threats of retaliation from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and promises of escalation from U.S. President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Ryan Monarch, a professor of economics at Syracuse University, says that $20 billion worth of goods only covers a small fraction of the total of imports to the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe U.S. is a very important source for Canadian exports and Canada is one of many sources of imports for the United States,\u201d Monarch explained.<\/p>\n
Despite the imbalance, Monarch says people in both the U.S. and Canada are sure to feel the impact.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re going to have businesses on both sides of the border that are dealing with higher costs and more uncertainty, both of which are not sort of conducive to good business and to providing products to consumers at their sort of most efficient prices,\u201d Monarch said.<\/p>\n
The growing tension and uncertainty have been making it difficult for those who rely on the goods, especially for contractors like Joe Hogan, the vice president for building services for the Associate General Contractors of New York State.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re bidding a job and what we call a hard bid project, where you\u2019ve got to guarantee a price at bid time, that uncertainty can certainly have a great deal of impact on the cost of the project, whether the project can go forward, and certainly the cost to the taxpayers of New York state, if they were talking about public jobs,\u201d Hogan explained.<\/p>\n
Karin Reeves, a farmer, says that uncertainty is taking a toll on her operation as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether you\u2019re a small business owner or a large corporation, the uncertainty is just not good for making business decisions, for planning for the future for long-term success,\u201d Reeves said.<\/p>\n
Reeves says the only thing her farm gets from Canada is ingredients for fertilizer, like potash.<\/p>\n
\u201cFertilizer is very expensive, you know, there’s nitrogen, potash, a lot of different components to fertilizer,\u201d Reeves explained. \u201cSo when the cost of fertilizer goes up, and that is a pretty big input cost for most farms, so we’re conscious that that is something that is coming from Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reeves says these latest tariffs, while impactful, are not nearly as impactful as the other tariffs Trump has imposed since taking office. She says the uncertainty the tariffs create are causing all sorts of problems for the farm.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are trying to buy a piece of equipment right now, they can\u2019t give me a real quote about what it\u2019s actually going to cost because they\u2019re uncertain about what the tariffs will be at the time we actually bring the prices of equipment up,\u201d Reeves said.<\/p>\n
Though that\u2019s just one small example, Monarch agrees that this uncertainty caused by a rapidly escalating trade war is not helping with concerns about affordability, and instead, is only serving to hurt supply chains and consumers alike.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe U.S. has the ability to inflict great pain on the Canadian economy, so there better be a good reason for why we would do this,\u201d Monarch said, \u201cIt\u2019s going to raise costs for U.S. families and consumers, but it\u2019s definitely going to hurt Canadian businesses and Canadian families.\u201d<\/p>\n
The U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods went into effect this weekend. Any retaliatory penalties imposed on Canada\u2019s side will go into effect on Sept. 8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United States and Canada are falling deeper into what\u2019s being called a trade war after negotiations between…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[257,6314,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,87,200],"class_list":["post-328825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-central-ny","tag-natalie-mooney","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}