OTTAWA—Paul McDonald is caught in the crossfire. The general manager of Bradford White Canada, a water heater vendor in Halton Hills, says he is already losing customers in the trade war with the United States. His business, like so many that adapted to the reality of free trade on the continent in recent decades, straddles the Canada-U.S. border. It buys steel from Sault Ste. Marie, ships it to Michigan for manufacturing, and then brings back finished water heaters to sell in Canada. But now the vendor has to account for a new reality of trade hostility, wherein the U.S. under President Donald Trump slaps import taxes on Canadian steel and aluminum, and Ottawa responds in kind with $16.6-billion in tariffs of its own on a range of goods entering Canada from the U.S., including — yep — water heaters. That means McDonald’s business now has to pay the 25-per-cent U.S. tariff on the Canadian steel it sends to Michigan, and then fork over an additional 10 per cent when its finished water heaters are sent back to Canada for sale — a one-two punch that McDonald calls an “unintended consequence” of the tariff tit-for-tat between neighbouring countries. “We agree there should be a retaliation, so long as it’s balanced,” said McDonald, who explained that his company’s competitors in Canada aren’t disadvantaged in the same way because their supply chains are set up differently. “We feel there should be some sort of exemption or accounting for that,” he said. Read more: U.S. files World Trade Organization complaint against Canada’s retaliatory tariffs#BoycottUSA movement is anecdotal — so farEverything you wanted to know about the Canada-U.S. trade war but were afraid to askBradford White is among Canadian businesses that, while generally supportive of the Liberal government’s response to Trump’s tariffs, argue Canada’s retaliatory import taxes are causing undu ...
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