BURST
Specialty manufacturer Revival Stillworks on Vancouver Island is bracing for potential hits on both fronts of Canada’s escalating trade war with the U.S.
They know U.S. sales of the bespoke distillery equipment they fabricate at a facility in Sidney will be subject to President Donald Trump’s Section 338 tariffs that came into effect Saturday. The U.S. is about half of the company’s market.
Company executive Darcy Lane is working to confirm that some of the equipment they buy from south of the border will be hit by Canadian counter tariffs announced Tuesday.
“I’m sure it will be, because I saw there’s electronics that are included,” said Lane, who is director of sales and business development at Revival.
Federal Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne announced the schedule of counter tariffs in Ottawa on Tuesday, 15 to 50 per cent levies on roughly $28 billion in U.S. imports, corresponding with the $28 billion hit to Canadian exports.
Canada’s counter tariffs were crafted to hit U.S. products where local consumers have alternatives. The goal is to level the playing field for Canadian industries and businesses subject to U.S. tariffs.
But Revival took a blow to its U.S. sales in the first round of tariffs launched by Trump in 2025 when American customers cancelled orders, Canadian customers held off on purchases due to the uncertainty, and the company had to lay off some staff.
Lane said Revival had almost built back its sales pipeline, and it has millions of dollars worth of projects in the works.
“To our U.S. customers, there’s not much we can do (except) say, ‘Hey, look guys, you know we would love to work with you. We’re pretty optimistic that our governments are going to work this out,'” Lane added.
And if they are thinking of cancelling purchases, “just buy us a bit more time, and we’re hoping our governments can work it out. ”
At home, Lane said Revival will be looking for more straightforward financial assistance than the package extended to businesses in 2025 that the company didn’t qualify for.
Ottawa, on Tuesday, unveiled $7.5 billion in spending on support programs to help businesses and workers weather tariff impacts. It includes $1.5 billion to shore up its regional tariff response initiative for small and medium businesses administered under a strategic response fund.
The problem with that support program when it was first introduced is that it came with thresholds of minimum revenue of $2 million or having at least 10 employees to qualify, according to Ryan Mitton, B.C. director of legislative affairs for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
“That has shut out a good portion of small businesses” in B.C., Mitton added. He said that CFIB would prefer to see a simpler, more streamlined program in which businesses just have to prove they are “a real Canadian business” to qualify.
That is important, Mitton said, because two in five of its exporting members will be hit by U.S. import tariffs, with one in 20 expecting to see their revenue wiped out by the levies.
To make matters worse, a significant portion of CFIB’s members will have to absorb the cost of U.S. imports in their supply chains, Mitton added.
“No one really wins in a trade war if you’re a small business.”
Laura Jones, CEO of the Business Council of B.C., said tariffs “are terrible economic policy, full stop.” The challenge is to protect Canadian companies while also focusing on policies that help the domestic economy.
Canada’s counter tariff schedule stretches to 18 pages, covering a bewildering list of 700 items, ranging from ornamental fish and seafood to golf clubs and fishing poles.
They include levies that correspond with U.S. Section 338 tariffs on plywood and wood veneers and corrugated cardboard.
That levels the playing field for Surrey-headquartered CanCorr, which manufactures cardboard and boxes, according to Baha Naemi, the company’s managing director.
CanCorr typically sells about $80 million worth of product to the U.S., but Naemi said he and his competitors know that Canadian companies import far more than they export.
So Naemi believes his company will be able to weather short-term disruption if they can fill in any void left by counter tariffs.
The counter tariff, however, isn’t the strategy, Naemi said. If all it does is make imports more expensive, he argues Canadian businesses will lose.
“The opportunity is to use this period to replace imports with Canadian production wherever we genuinely have the capacity to do so,” Naemi said.
For other specialty wood producers, that will mean paying attention to other imports of products such as plywood and veneers, according to Bhavjit Thandi, chief financial officer of Richmond Plywood.
In the meantime, Jones said Canada needs to “continue to support this very proportionate, calm, measured approach.”
“It would be great to get back to the table with the U.S., but only with a fair deal,” Jones said. “I agree with the prime minster’s assessment — no deal is better than a bad deal.”