U.S. tariffs expected to impact food prices across Canada

Tariffs are expected to impact your next meal out or trip to the grocery store, as dozens of food products are targeted by 50 per cent levies from the United States, and Canada’s new counter-tariffs.

Local restaurants are caught in the crossfire and aren’t sure how to prepare.

“It’s a struggle for a lot of small mom-and-pop shops,” said Sarah Denhollander, an employee at Drongkowski’s.

Between the rising cost of groceries and fuel surcharges on deliveries, Waterdown’s Drongkowski’s is one of countless small businesses that is feeling the pinch.

They haven’t had to raise prices so far.

“We’ve tried to find different suppliers based on that because the prices have gone up,” Denhollander said. “We want to try and keep our prices as they are. We don’t want to raise them too much.”

Dozens of Canadian food items were hit with 50 per cent tariffs from the U.S. over the weekend, especially in the dairy industry. Then today, Ottawa announced a slew of counter-tariffs, placing a range of levies on products including seafood, cheese and dough imported from the U.S. into Canada.

Both are expected to send ripples through the supply chain.

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“Margins are so low in food, so just an extra 10 per cent makes a huge difference,” said Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University.

Charlebois says this round of counter-tariffs is much more targeted compared to those imposed by former prime minister Justin Trudeau last year.

“I think everyone noticed that coffee prices skyrocketed. That’s due to the fact that coffee prices were higher,” Charlebois said. “But also, counter-tariffs did impact prices for many, many products, including coffee.”

He estimates that the former prime minister’s counter-tariffs had roughly five times the impact on food prices compared to what he expects will happen in this latest round.

“Extremely worried,” said Julie Kwiecinski of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

The organization says its members — across a number of industries, including food service — are concerned.

“In our survey results, our members are mixed on retaliatory tariffs,” Kwiecinski said. “However, 50 per cent of them that do business with the States are importers. So that will hugely impact them.”

They are asking for more support from the federal government for small business, saying the $7.5 billion in aid announced today to help workers won’t cut it.

“Unfortunately, it’s just the usual alphabet soup of challenging programs that our members likely don’t qualify for,” Kwiecinski said.

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