{"id":16324,"date":"2025-02-12T13:02:28","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T13:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/torontotribune.ca\/index.php\/2025\/02\/12\/donald-trumps-metal-tariff-threat-rattles-canadas-can-industry-national\/"},"modified":"2025-02-12T13:02:28","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T13:02:28","slug":"donald-trumps-metal-tariff-threat-rattles-canadas-can-industry-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/torontotribune.ca\/index.php\/2025\/02\/12\/donald-trumps-metal-tariff-threat-rattles-canadas-can-industry-national\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump\u2019s metal tariff threat rattles Canada\u2019s can industry – National"},"content":{"rendered":"


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U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> threat to impose sweeping metals tariffs is creating worry and opportunity in can manufacturing and packaging, an industry that relies heavily on the raw materials.<\/p>\n

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The 25 per cent tax on aluminum and steel<\/a> coming into the United States starting March 12, and the possibility of retaliation tariffs, is expected to have cost ripples for buyers of beer, soup and everything else producers seal up in metal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just another hit that the industry can\u2019t take,\u201d said CJ H\u00e9lie, president of Beer Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe magnitude and the timing, you know, couldn\u2019t be worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

While almost 90 per cent of beer consumed in Canada is brewed here, most of the cans are imported, including the popular 473 millilitre size popular among craft breweries, he said.<\/p>\n

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U.S. manufacturers of cans import metal from Canada \u2014 the metal makes up about 70 per cent of the price of a can. Tariffs would make those imports more costly for the U.S. firms, in turn increasing the cost of those cans when they are sold back to Canadian companies.<\/p>\n

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If Canada imposes its own counter-tariffs, goods could be hit twice.<\/p>\n

\u2018We\u2019re still in an affordability crisis. Everybody is feeling it everywhere, and so if these tariffs and potential countermeasures by Canada come into play, brewers are going to face a very difficult decision,\u201d said H\u00e9lie.<\/p>\n

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The industry faces aluminum tariffs that are much higher than the 10 per cent imposed during Trump\u2019s last term, and while the tax may only amount to a few cents per can, the costs for the industry will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, said H\u00e9lie.<\/p>\n

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The potential costs are also higher because cans keep growing in popularity over glass bottles, making up 75 per cent of sales in 2023, up from 53 per cent in 2015, the trade association said.<\/p>\n

The previous round of tariff threats did lead to some increased domestic production of cans, but given the costs involved and the integrated nature of the two countries\u2019 economies it was not easy to increase capacity, said H\u00e9lie.<\/p>\n

Erick Vachon is one of those who saw an opportunity for domestic production as supply chains have become less reliable.<\/p>\n

He co-founded Ideal Can in 2020 and now leads what he says is the only Canadian producer of food cans while also producing a range of other can offerings across three lines, each producing about 1,000 cans a minute.<\/p>\n

Anticipating more demand for his domestically-produced cans, Vachon is working to add another shift to increase capacity and offset a bit of the hit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tariff is bad for, of course, for Canadian people,\u201d said Vachon.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I need to have three shifts a week, and of course we\u2019re looking to increase the capacity of the factory.\u201d<\/p>\n

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