C&C #23: The Trade War Is Here

No deal. Late Friday night, the Canada-U.S. trade talks collapsed — and at 12:01 Saturday morning, 50 per cent American tariffs hit roughly $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. Cement. Lumber, plywood, doors. Machinery. Even hockey sticks. Seventy years of building things together, and it's come to this.

Episode 23 of ICBA Coffee & Construction — the news that matters to the people who build British Columbia and Alberta, with ICBA's Jordan Bateman. One story today, because it's that big — in three parts: what happened, what it does to your job sites, and where Canada goes from here.

☕ THE BIG ONE: 50% tariffs on $20 BILLION of Canadian goods, live since 12:01 Saturday morning — and this time there's no CUSMA workaround. Meeting the trade deal's rules of origin gets you nothing.

🇺🇸 THE ESCALATION: Monday morning, President Trump threatened to double tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks and auto parts — 25 to 50 per cent — starting January 1. The temperature is not coming down.

💸 THE PART SNEAKING UP ON YOU: Canada answers September 8, dollar for dollar — and the early list (American steel, appliances, agricultural equipment, electronics) walks straight onto your job site. The product-by-product schedule ISN'T FINAL yet — there's still time to tell Ottawa which American inputs your business can't replace.

🔧 THE PLAYBOOK: reprice everything that crosses the border, shorten your quote life, put a tariff clause in every contract, and pull the HS codes on your top 20 inputs so you know your exposure instead of guessing at it.

🇨🇦 WHERE CANADA GOES FROM HERE: Team Canada — no joy in this fight, and the way out is to build. Knock down the trade walls between provinces, get our resources to tidewater, and move at the speed Ottawa just showed with its $70 BILLION Labrador clean-energy backing.

👷 PLUS: ICBA Chief Economist Jock Finlayson on the $650 BILLION B.C.-Alberta project inventory — and why the coming construction worker crunch could be 3-4 TIMES bigger than official forecasts.

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