More pain is on tap for craft breweries, homebuilders and manufacturers as U.S. tariffs on imported aluminum — and the counter-levies Canada is lobbing back — drive up costs.
Blair Berdusco, chair of the Canadian Craft Brewers Association, said it amounts to a double hit. Canadian aluminum being shipped to the United States to make cans is subject to a new 25 per cent tariff, and there's another ding when the finished cans cross back over the 49th parallel.
She said the biggest impact is being felt for the 473-millilitre tallboy cans that craft breweries most often use, since no one makes them in Canada. China makes cans, but it's being hit by the same aluminum tariffs.
"Unfortunately there's not a lot of other options right now just based on the major suppliers to the industry and the demand," said Berdusco.
"There's almost 1,200 breweries across Canada who are using these cans."
With cans already costing 38 cents each, the tariffs would represent a "significant" increase in costs, Berdusco said.
Ideally, costs wouldn't have to be passed on to consumers, but craft brewers' margins are tight and they don't have the same economies of scale their bigger counterparts do, she added.
South of the border, Can Manufacturers Institute president Robert Budway cautioned that tariffs on steel and aluminum would make canned food and beverages more expensive in the U.S.
"Consumers will feel the inflationary impact of these tariffs at the grocery store. Recent history has demonstrated that trade protectionist measures have serious impacts for the U.S. economy and domestic food security," he said in a news release.
"Aluminum and steel tariffs place price pressures on American-produced goods by artificially and dramatically increasing the cost of critical production materials, making U.S.-made food less competitive against foreign products."
Others, meanwhile, are flagging the impact on the construction industry, a heavy user of the tariffed metals.
Anything that adds to building costs is bad news for real estate developers — and finding a solution to Canada's housing affordability crisis, said Sherry Larjani, president of Spotlight Development.
She said the tariffs are sure to make it more expensive to build multi-unit housing developments, but the degree varies project by project. She said sometimes those materials can be swapped out for timber, but even then, U.S. President Donald Trump has floated an increased tariff on lumber, so it could be a wash.
“Without having a solution to this problem, the cost of construction is going to go massively higher. It doesn’t matter if it’s aluminum, or steel or if it’s lumber or if it’s windows or it’s glass," she said.
"It’s really going to affect the bottom line of all of us.”
Rodrigue Gilbert, president of the Canadian Construction Association, said the steel and aluminum tariffs "will have an impact definitely," but it's tough to pin down the magnitude yet.
“In the end, the true cost will be the Canadians buying houses" as well as those paying for hospitals and schools with their tax dollars, he said.
In the construction industry, "uncertainty is our worst enemy."
“Right now we are working on projects that were signed four, five, six years ago with pricing that was decided at that time," said Gilbert.
The plant manager at Wohler Canada Inc. in Mississauga, Ont., which makes pie tins, takeout containers and other items out of aluminum foil, is getting squeezed by tariffs — and not just the ones being fired between Canada and the U.S.
Sam Thang said 20 per cent of the plant's finished products go to the United States and he figures that portion of his business is "gone."
Add to that the indirect impact from Canadian customers who use Wohler's tins for their pies and ready-made meals and then sell their goods in the United States. Those customers could also see their sales take a hit because of tariffs, reducing their demand for Wohler's tins.
"At the moment we cannot quantify how much the impact is. It could be half, it could be less, it could be more," Thang said.
It in a worst-case scenario, their business in Canada could be cut to 40 per cent of what it was, he said.
As for the raw material used to make the food containers, Thang said that is imported from China.
Last October, the federal government imposed a 25 per cent surtax on aluminum from China, citing "pervasive subsidization and other non-market policies." Wohler applied for and received a pause on that tax until the end of this year.
Canada has a separate 6.5 per cent tariff on finished aluminum containers like what Wohler makes, and Thang said that's made it harder for his company to compete as it's seen its tariff-related costs rise by a much higher degree.
"We are very stressed," Thang said.
Ottawa said Wednesday it will impose 25 per cent tariffs on U.S. goods worth $29.8 billion in retaliation for steel and aluminum tariffs the Trump administration imposed.
All countries, including Canada, were hit Wednesday with 25 per cent levies on imports of those materials into the United States.
Canada's dollar-for-dollar tariffs will take effect at 12:01 ET Thursday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 12, 2025.
Lauren Krugel, The Canadian Press
