Figures presented to members of parliament by an economist put the weekly price tag of counter-tariffs on American goods at roughly $100 million, with household prices lifted by approximately 0.25 per cent as a result. Duty rates on goods from the United States spanned a wide band — starting at 15 per cent for farm machinery and household appliances, climbing to 25 per cent on construction materials, and reaching as high as 50 per cent for smartphones, furniture, and both aluminium and steel.
Presenting figures to MPs, economist Trevor Tombe outlined that retaliatory tariffs put in place by Ottawa trimmed disposable income for households earning below $30,000 annually by around half a percentage point while pushing consumer prices up by approximately 0.25 per cent on a broad basis. He put the weekly burden on consumers alone at roughly $100 million in added expenditure, and noted that such a cost might be viewed as acceptable if non-economic goals were being served by the tariffs, though he indicated no clear sense of what those goals would be.
Tombe described the tariffs as fundamentally an internal American policy matter rather than a trade dispute directed at Canada, adding that Ottawa's counter-measures appear to carry limited influence on Washington's decisions while passing added costs along to Canadian consumers. That position contrasts with the rationale offered by Industry Minister Mélanie Joly, who stated in August that the counter-tariffs were designed both to protect domestic producers and to apply political pressure on the White House, with the measures deliberately calibrated to affect goods tied to specific American states. Tombe further characterised the tariff increases as the most consequential shift in trade policy across the country's 250-year history.
Tariffs on goods entering the United States averaged around 2 per cent globally in 2024, according to Tombe, before climbing to roughly 30 per cent in 2025 and then easing back down to an average of 11 per cent. Tombe placed the average U.S. tariff on Canadian goods at 8 per cent — a rate below what 93 other countries face — and suggested the situation points less toward a bilateral trade conflict than toward a broader restructuring of how the U.S. economy is managed.
In his view, a tariff functions as two policies layered into one: a tax falling on domestic consumers and, at the identical rate, a subsidy flowing back to domestic producers. According to Tombe, the retaliatory tariffs put in place by Canada in 2025 brought approximately $4 billion into federal coffers across a six-month window.
Pointing to the limited leverage a small nation's trade penalties can realistically exert on a much larger economy, he told members of parliament that the retaliatory measures put in place had not produced any observable shift in how the United States conducts itself. Tombe noted that the retaliatory package fell short of matching American tariffs dollar for dollar, with the Canadian response amounting to roughly 60 cents on every dollar imposed.
Tombe described the situation as a three-way tension — between hitting goods from politically consequential states, targeting products where Canadian buyers hold substantial purchasing weight, and selecting items where domestic alternatives are readily available — and noted that satisfying all three conditions at once narrows any retaliatory package to roughly one-tenth the scale of a full dollar-for-dollar response.
