A new round of U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods took effect just after midnight on Tuesday, adding 50 per cent levies to 110 products ranging from specific cheeses to motorboats, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) and furniture.
The fresh tariffs are part of a series of additions and removals announced by the Trump administration last week. Categories added to the tariff list include aluminum products, paper and wood products, iron or steel beams, electric lamps and mattresses.
The White House said it would simultaneously remove tariffs on 10 items including salt, sugar, cement, switchboards and toilet paper in an effort to “offset the burden to U.S. commerce while better serving the public interest.”
In 2024, Canada exported approximately $328 million US worth of toilet paper to the U.S., making it the country’s largest international provider.
Canada is also one of the biggest salt providers south of the border, with the U.S. importing roughly $159.2 million US worth of salt from Canada in 2025, according to UN Comtrade and World Bank trade data.
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The removals and additions amount to nearly the same economic value, effectively cancelling each other out, experts say.
“In dollar terms they are basically the same,” Wolfgang Alschner, the Hyman Soloway chair in business and trade law at the University of Ottawa, told CBC News.
The categories that had tariffs removed represent roughly $2.41 billion, while the added tariffs cover roughly $2.56 billion of 2025 trade, according to an analysis by Alschner. This amounts to only a slight increase in tariff coverage, representing a fraction of trade between the two countries.
The biggest dollar value is in the category of switchgear assemblies and switchboards — the U.S. imported roughly $750 million US of these from Canada in 2025, which have applications ranging from cars to airplanes, Alschner said.
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The decision to remove some tariffs shows that the U.S. is paying attention to which costs get passed down to the American consumer, and are willing to recalibrate to ease their own economic pain, Alschner said.
“You need salt to salt your roads in winter. So this is not something that’s easily substituted away,” he said. “Similarly for cement.”
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The new measures come after the U.S. and Canada failed to reach a trade agreement in August, ramping up an ongoing trade war.
On Aug. 22, the U.S. followed through with its threat of crushing 50 per cent tariffs on a wide swath of Canadian goods. Canada retaliated with its own tariffs on nearly 700 categories of U.S. goods, which came into effect on Sept. 8.
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In addition to new tariffs on Sept. 15, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a pending import ban on Canadian booze, motorcycles and a handful of other goods. The import ban doesn’t take effect until Sept. 29.
Experts say the scope of the trade war has grown, and as a result, regional disruptions could lead to job losses and the closure of small businesses.
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Alschner says the latest tariffs will limit some Canadian companies from pivoting. For instance, an aluminum company might have been able to shift more production to types of aluminum that weren’t tariffed before.
But with the addition of more hyper-specific tariffs, “some of these loopholes have been closed.”
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Economist Andrew Dicapua told CBC News the muted response from the U.S. to Canada’s counter-tariffs, coupled with the longer timeline before the import bans come into effect, could be a sign that we’re closer to a deal.
Trump recently commented that a trade deal with Canada could come “fairly soon,” while meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin in Dublin over the weekend, Dicapua noted.
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“The fact that those bans were put later than the tariffs themselves should give us an indication that the U.S. is leaving room for negotiation,” Dicapua said.
“The bottom line is that we’ve got to get to an agreement with the United States as quickly as possible. This tit-for-tat strategy, although well-intentioned, is not a sustainable route.”
