IRRICANA, Alta. - An Alberta couple has stopped selling their handcrafted wooden lawn games to American customers after the United States announced a 50 per cent tariff on a wide range of Canadian goods, including some products covered by the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). Andre Proust and Stella Brassard, owners of Andre and Stella Games, craft their games at their home-based shop in Irricana, Alta., and sell them through the e-commerce site Etsy. They say the tariff set to take effect next month has made exporting to their largest market too risky. More than half of their sales go to the U.S. “You put five years into a business, and something like that determines if you’re going to make money or not,” Proust said. “With the new tariffs and stuff, it’s going to make it pretty tough on us.” The couple has suspended U.S. orders before the tariffs are set to take effect on Aug. 19, because their games can take two to three weeks to produce. Brassard said the rules could change between the time an order is placed and when it is ready to cross the border. “We’ve had to shut it down now to get ahead of that, so that we don’t end up surprised with a whole bunch of orders that are going out, but all of a sudden we have to pay 50 per cent more,” she said. Brassard said the business cannot reasonably pass the additional expense on to its American customers. “I can’t expect our customers, our buyers, to take on that burden,” she said. “It’s just too much to ask of them, and we understand that it’s not feasible.” The decision comes after the couple spent months qualifying their products under CUSMA. They began the process after changes to the U.S. de minimis exemption complicated the shipment of commercial orders valued at less than US$800. Becoming CUSMA compliant allowed the business to demonstrate that its Canadian-made products met the agreement’s rules, allowing them to export to the United States without paying tariffs under the trade agreement. “It’s a very long process,” Proust said. “You have to register every product that you’re selling, and it could take up to three months.” Proust said the latest announcement was especially discouraging after the work they had completed to comply with the trade agreement. Experts say Canadian companies face hard decisions Dan Kelly, president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), said the latest threat strikes at the core of the trade agreement. “We’ve been down this road for a year and a half with on-and-off threats, continually,” Kelly said. “This one is big, though. This is the heart of the CUSMA agreement, going after basically goods that, to this point, have been allowed to enter the U.S. market tariff-free.” Kelly said the unpredictability surrounding U.S. trade policy is making it increasingly difficult for Canadian companies to make decisions. “If you’re a small firm, you just don’t have a lot of margin to be able to play with here. A bad business decision can cripple your business,” he said. “If this were to come to pass, it would be absolutely devastating for thousands and thousands of businesses across the country, many of whom are small and medium-sized.” She adds that a CFIB survey found 52 per cent of Canadian small businesses no longer consider the U.S. a reliable trading partner, leading to more diversifying their trade. “So, either they’re looking for new suppliers or new customers either within Canada or around the world to reduce their dependence on the U.S. market.” Proust and Brassard are now following that path. They plan to focus on expanding their Canadian customer base while considering other markets, including Europe. “Keep it Canadian and maybe eventually, maybe look into a European market,” Proust said. “We’re kind of looking into our options.” Despite suspending U.S. sales, Brassard said she hopes the border will not remain closed to their products permanently. “Long term, I’m hoping that the tariffs disappear and we can get back to helping out our U.S. friends with game play.”
