As Canadian counter tariffs on a slew of American goods came into effect Tuesday, local businesses across Ottawa and eastern Ontario are seeing immediate impacts to products in store. At McMullan Appliance and Mattress in Smiths Falls, owner Corey McMullan says he is being hung out to dry after the price of one of his most popular products – Huebsch washers and dryers, strictly made in America – shot up over night. “They have been made in Wisconsin for 115 years, and they only make washers and dryers,” says McMullan. “A company like that doesn’t have any products that come from other factories overseas where they could disperse the tariff to. So, it took the full brunt of the tariffs and overnight, with our new price list, they went up 26 per cent, or $540 per machine.” McMullan says unlike other businesses that would have America goods already pre-stocked, he is forced to raise his price with the tariff, with no choice but to pass it on to the consumer. “When my retail price has to change on my advertised price, we’re protected against that. So, the consumers are the one that are going to bear the full brunt of it.” At Cash & Carry Carpet Centre in Ottawa, co-owner George Papadopoulos says he will be able to hold off on raising prices until the fall, having stocked up an extra 20 percent before the retaliatory tariffs came into effect. “We haven’t done it yet, but it’s coming,” Papadopoulos tells CTV News. “Some of our manufacturing suppliers, they’re absorbing some of the costs as of now in September. But if this trade war keeps going, prices will be going up.” “As soon as inventory levels start to dissipate and I have to replenish, we’re looking at like a 10 per cent, 15 per cent increase on some of these products.” The carpet and flooring retailer says customers are leaning into Canadian made products as of late, but price increases will be inevitable should this trade war continue, given that North America’s largest carpeting distributors reside in North Carolina. “We can only offer so much,” he says. “The Americans still have a wide array of products compared to the Canadian manufacturers.” Charles-Étienne Beaudry, a political science professor at the University of Ottawa, says these latest tit-for-tat measures between Canada and the United States could lead to a phenomenon called “stagflation”, where prices rise sharply, but spending power fails to keep pace, leading to a loss of jobs. “With sudden inflation and at the same time, losing 100,000 jobs, another 10,000 jobs probably directly from the retaliatory counter tariffs of Canada, […] we will have, maybe, more than a 7 per cent unemployment rate.” Beaudry says if Canada can make it through this expensive time of tariffs, it could open up the country to be less dependent on the U-S. “The light at the end of the tunnel is a Canadian economy that is less concentrated on exportation to the U.S., into the U.S. market, and more diversified.”
