EXCLUSIVE: Trump Tariffs 'Putting Up to 100,000 Canadian Jobs Under Threat'

Donald Trump's new 50 percent tariffs on hundreds of Canadian exports could put as many as 90,000 jobs at risk as companies face being effectively priced out of their biggest foreign market, Radaronline.com can reveal.

Trump, 80, imposed the levies after trade negotiations with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney collapsed, affecting roughly $20billion of Canadian exports.

The measures come on top of existing 50 percent tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium and 25 percent duties on automobiles, intensifying a trade confrontation between the neighboring economies.

A trade source exclusively told Radar: "The real threat in this is that tariffs of this magnitude don't merely make Canadian goods a little more expensive – for some businesses they could make selling into the United States commercially impossible. A 50 percent levy completely changes the economics for manufacturers that have spent years building their operations around access to American customers and cross-border supply chains.

"Most of these companies simply don't have profit margins anywhere near large enough to swallow an additional cost of that size. Their alternative would be to pass much of it on through dramatically higher prices, but that immediately puts them at a huge disadvantage against American producers or overseas competitors whose goods aren't facing the same barrier.

"That leaves Canadian exporters with some extremely difficult choices. They can try to operate at unsustainable margins, raise prices and risk losing customers, dramatically reduce shipments into America or withdraw from that market altogether. For businesses heavily dependent on US sales, none of those options is particularly attractive.

"The concern then becomes much bigger than the immediate companies being hit. When factories lose orders, production gets reduced and investment is postponed. Eventually businesses start cutting shifts and jobs. In this case, up to 90,000 to 100,000 jobs could go. This is because the effects of tariffs travel through trucking companies, suppliers and communities that depend upon those employers.

"That is how a tariff dispute involving particular products can potentially translate into tens of thousands of Canadian jobs being threatened.

"The longer these barriers remain in place, the greater the danger that what initially looks like a trade problem develops into a much broader employment problem."

Trevor Tombe, a trade economist at the University of Calgary, is also among those who have calculated as many as 90,000 Canadian jobs could disappear.

Those losses could extend beyond manufacturers directly targeted by tariffs. Transportation companies, suppliers and other businesses dependent on cross-border trade could suffer as exports decline.

And Joseph Steinberg, a University of Toronto macroeconomics professor, warned some companies could disappear entirely.

Steinberg told the New York Times "Fifty percent is a huge number for the individual products that are affected."

He added: "In some cases, exports will stop altogether, and the firms that produce those products will be severely impacted. Some will undoubtedly shut down."

Forestry faces particular pressure, with plywood, laminated wood, fiberboard, paper, packaging and tissue among products facing additional tariffs.

Derek Nighbor, president of the Forest Products Association of Canada, told the Times: "We're getting hammered."

Machinery, electronics, furniture, toys and plastic-heavy products are also expected to be severely affected.