This letter is presented unedited from the March 2025 issue of Heavy Equipment Guide. We will continue to share up-to-date comment from the industry at heavyequipmentguide.ca.
The situation presented in this letter could be drastically different by the time you read this — that is, the nature of the current business climate as it relates to President Trump's ill-informed tariffs on Canada and Mexico. The feeling of instability, however, will remain for the foreseeable future — and that's bad for the construction industry.
At press time, on March 6, the tariffs on Canada are in effect.
The construction industries of Canada, the U.S., and Mexico are so intimately connected that the tariffs imposed by President Trump will have a devastating effect on the procurement of materials, production, and sale of construction equipment.
During the initial threat of tariffs, at the start of February, Rodrigue Gilbert, president of the Canadian Construction Association (CCA), said: "Canada's construction industry is disappointed to see the imposition of tariffs." He continued, "We appreciate that the federal government has issued a strong response to President Trump's senseless tariffs and will hold consultations with industry on further measures."
On March 5, after tariffs came into effect, Gilbert stated: "The Canadian and American construction industries rely heavily on free-flowing supplies of essential construction materials. These needless tariffs will decrease productivity, harm economic growth, and put critical projects and countless construction jobs at risk — on both sides of the border. Once again, the new U.S. administration clearly demonstrates that they have a limited understanding of how damaging these measures will be on the integrated economy between our two countries."
When you build your business on strong relationships and mutual respect, the example that our southern neighbor has set, which demonstrates none of these values, nor basic decency, is disheartening. Strong relationships are the basis for good business, and the strong relationship that Canada and the U.S. have historically enjoyed is in jeopardy for no good reason.
It was reported in Reuters on February 10 that a Canadian distributor for Power Curbers, which manufactures its machines in North Carolina, was in a mad scramble to get two machines over the border as fast as possible to avoid a 25 percent tariff on $700,000 worth of equipment.
This is one example of the chaos that will be unleashed by this short-sighted policy, and this is not the type of scramble that your business should be facing when you have other challenges to deal with. Roads still need to be built, foundations need to be dug, and you need predictability and stability to accomplish these things.
While the AEM has yet to comment on the current tariffs, on February 10 AEM Senior Vice President Kip Eideberg called President Trump's decision to impose 25 percent tariffs on aluminum and steel imports "alarming," noting that the tariffs will further escalate trade tensions and global economic uncertainty, raising the cost of manufacturing equipment in America.
And, as Power Curbers President Stephen Bullock told Reuters in February, he can't make long-term decisions to hire more workers in this climate of unpredictability.
This, of course, undermines the America First agenda to put Americans back to work in American factories. How are manufacturers, distributors, and buyers supposed to make sound business decisions in this unpredictable climate?
As of completing this letter, still on March 6, President Trump has now postponed the tariffs on Canada and Mexico until April 2.
Make this make sense.
