By promise mukherjee
Ottawa (Reuters) -a manufacturer of capsules and tablets for the pharmaceutical industry covers Asia for new partners. A manufacturer of steel components, with clientele in the United States that dates back 35 years, tells customers to expect to pay higher prices. Another company, which produces mascot costumes for sporting or school events, reduces its prices so as not to lose American customers.
President Donald Trump's pricing war – and its repeated threats to annex Canada – have turned upside down in close commercial links between the two North American neighbors and prompted many Canadian manufacturing companies to revise their long -term commercial strategies.
Prime Minister Mark Carney, who led the Liberal Party to victory last month by campaigning to resist Trump, is expected to meet the US president in the White House on Tuesday. He said on several occasions that the old relationship with the United States was over.
Even if the United States forces a new trade agreement with Canada, Trump's erratic policy and the uncertainty of doing business with the United States will persist, according to interviews with more than a dozen companies, advisers, commercial lawyers and associations.
“If you are an intelligent and wise business business, you are not going to return directly to another arrangement where you totally depend on an American partner,” said Mike Chisholm, who heads for Canadian exporters.
“The owners want stability, the banks want stability, the investment capital funds want stability,” he said. “They will just be very, very careful.”
Canada, which depended historically on the US markets for 75% of its exports, was one of the first countries affected by Trump's prices.
Trump has justified prices as a way to hold Canada responsible for the fact that fentanyl enters the United States – although data show that less than 1% of all crises come from the Canadian border.
In March, Trump imposed a price of 25% on all imports of steel and aluminum in the United States, then slapped an additional 25% rate on cars and parts that did not comply with a North American free trade agreement, although he stopped a large reciprocal rate imposed on certain countries at the beginning of April.
Experts said that adding reciprocal prices in Canada would have increased bankruptcy in the manufacturing sector.
The manufacturing sector are shipping 42% of its production in the United States and 41% of its approximately 1.7 million workers are based on American imports, according to government figures.
The Carney office refused to provide new comments on the impact of prices.
