Small Canadian Firms Are Paying for Trade War Despite Exemptions

After US President Donald Trump announced tariffs on imports from Canada in March, one small Ontario manufacturer saw orders plunge to nearly zero.

“The business pretty much dried up overnight,” said Stephen Mallia, owner of telescope maker Starfield Optics in Bolton, Ontario. “The emails stopped coming in.”

He decided to pause shipments and begin making his top-selling product, a telescope tripod, entirely in Canada — instead of in China — so it would qualify for a tariff exemption. He estimated the switch to domestic manufacturing and components cost him as much as C$12,000 ($8,633), a sizable portion of the C$150,000 ...