From beer cans to car parts, St. Albert businesses are bracing for the local effects of an international trade war.
Tyrone Steel Ltd., a Sturgeon County steel fabricator, manufactures the steel skeletons for strip malls, Walmarts, schools, and other commercial retail buildings.
Project manager Kevin Currie said the company was already feeling the effects of market uncertainty, even before U.S. President Donald Trump's formal announcement on Monday slapping tariffs on all U.S. steel and aluminum imports.
"I found out on Friday that prices are going up," Currie said. "Now all my suppliers are holding their prices for only five days."
He said with the tariffs affecting the price of steel, it's hard for his company to get jobs, but also to plan for the jobs he does get.
"If you bid on it and then all of a sudden you get the job and then you're buying steel a couple months later, well then the steel prices went up fairly significantly," he said. "So you put a bid in and then you have to eat that cost or ask the client to pay more money."
Trump signed an executive order on the afternoon of Feb. 10, implementing a 25 per cent tariff on all steel and aluminum imports, beginning March 12.
With the price of bidding having gone up, Currie says that they didn't want to pull the trigger on any buildings until they knew what was going on.
"Now they're going to have to start doing it," he said. "But now they are going to realize the price of buildings are a third to two-thirds higher than it was before Christmas."
The uncertainty of what builders will do once they see the prices is concerning for him.
"It's worrisome for sure," Currie said. "We're bidding on five to six buildings a day. So, if nobody wants to … as soon as they see the prices of it, if nobody wants to pay it, then we don't have any work."
Currie pointed out this is not the first time they've had to deal with this. In 2018, Trump imposed a 25 per cent tariff on steel imports and a 10 per cent tariff on aluminum imports.
"It was something the owners wanted to pay," he said. "Like you go to the fridge and you want milk, you go to the store and buy milk. Even though it's extremely high prices, you have to drink it."
When asked about the impact tariffs might have on his auto body shop, Lore Ketsa, owner of Sturgeon Auto Body, got straight to the point. The price of car parts is going to go up.
A local St. Albert brewery is also expecting some sort of impact, even if it won't be immediately noticeable.
Matthew Atkins, the owner of Endeavour Brewing and Coffee Roasters, said he switched to a Chinese manufacturer for his aluminum cans the last time these tariffs were implemented in 2018. He has been using them ever since. But even though his aluminum cans are no longer manufactured in the U.S., he's still concerned his prices might go up.
"I think this is going to increase demand from other manufacturers," Atkins said. "So I do foresee prices going up."
He's also concerned about the impact any retaliatory tariffs implemented by Canada would have.
"If they're agricultural products, basically 90 per cent of my hops come from the U.S. So, that could have a huge impact on me as well," he said. He also imports various other products from the U.S. for his business, like fruits and cleaning products.
"Yeah, it's definitely going to be a huge impact," he said. Increasing the price of their beer to the consumer is an option he's having to look at.
"We were already looking at possibly doing an increase. We hadn't done one in quite a few years, even with the high inflation," he said. "I think it's kind of time. But we're just trying to hold the prices and be as efficient as possible to still make it affordable to people."
The uncertainty surrounding the whole situation weighs on a small business like his.
"It's an instability, right? It's like, 'What are my prices going to be next month?'" he said.
