Barrie businesses prepare for potential tariff war implications

Barrie business owners in the manufacturing and technology industries are preparing for the possibility of a tariff war between Canada the United States.

With threats being made on both sides of the border, tensions are on the rise and it has created uncertainty for small business owners who rely on partnerships south of the border.

Brett Murray, who has run JEBCO Industries for 41 years in Barrie and Innisfil wants an end to the political posturing.

“It’s just not fair that the common day every day worker is being used as a pawn in their political game,” says Murray from his Ellis Dr. Barrie manufacturing facility. He says the pandemic had a devastating effect on business and forced him to slash his workforce by two-thirds. Tariffs he fears could put many small businesses under.

“It could be devastating. It’s a tough enough time for people today. It’s a tough world out there. Everybody is hurting; everybody’s trying to make ends meet,” says Murray who urges Canadian politicians to uphold their end of the bargain with demands from the U.S. for Canada to ramp up spending on the military and border security to help hammer out a deal that will strengthen both countries.

“A tariff of that nature is unpredictable and uncontrollable so we don’t know or have any methodology to put in place to protect ourselves against such a thing.”

Some businesses, like Stephen Loftus’ Innovative Automation in Barrie, have already made business plans to deal with the effects of tariffs on day-to-day operations within the group of companies with facilities also in Newmarket.

“Part of what we’ve done here at Innovative, and the Innovative group of companies is to diversify so that we’re not relying as much on the US market, and more on a global market,” says Loftus.

Loftus employs about 180 people at Innovative Automation. About 40 per cent of his Barrie business is with the U.S. Other aspects of his group of companies focus primarily on growing business with global partners in Europe and Asia; ultimately reducing their reliance on the American economy to 10 per cent.

“It is a global market. We all need to be playing on the same field within that market so there’s a lot of different scenarios here that can come in to play and I don’t think it’s a one size fits all,” says Loftus.

“We cannot rely just on the US market and that’s why we’ve created products like Robo Tape and we are about to release another product called Robo Clip. These products are global products that will be in demand around the world and if they’re in demand in the US, the companies that want these products because they rolled leading products will have to pay the tariffs.”