The United States’ promise to slap tariffs on Canada has plunged the country into a state of economic uncertainty.
On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump signed orders to impose 25 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, which are scheduled to kick in on March 12.
Prior to this, the president had threatened to charge 25 per cent on most Canadian products imported into the U.S., with the exception of energy, which would be subject to a 10 per cent tariff.
After a phone call with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on February 3, the all-encompassing tariffs have been paused for at least 30 days as negotiations continue.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s Business Data Lab (BDL) has since released a report analyzing which cities in Canada will be hit the hardest by these tariffs.
“Canada and the U.S. have built a highly integrated and mutually-beneficial economic relationship over more than a century, with cross-border trade playing a critical role in both economies,” reads the report.
“Our updated modelling suggests that Trump’s tariff would cause significant economic problems for Canadians and Americans — potentially even causing a recession.”
Using localized trade data from Statistics Canada covering 41 cities with populations over 100,000, the BDL developed a U.S. Tariff Exposure Index that “reflects both the U.S. export intensity of a city’s economy and its dependence on the U.S. as a key export destination.”
Canadian Chamber of Commerce Business Data Lab
In a provided chart, cities higher up on the vertical axis export more goods to the U.S. as a share of their local economies, while cities farther to the right on the horizontal axis depend more on the U.S. as their key export market.
“Cities farther to the ‘northeast’ (like Saint John, Calgary and Windsor) are likely to be hit harder by the U.S. tariffs,” explained the BDL.
The BDL also ranked the 41 Canadian cities from most to least vulnerable to the U.S. tariffs.
Canadian Chamber of Commerce Business Data Lab
Saint John, New Brunswick, takes first place with a 131.1 per cent chance of being slammed by tariffs, followed by Calgary at 81.6 per cent.
The similarities between the top two most vulnerable cities? They’re both major hubs that export crude oil to the U.S.
“Our modelling estimates that the tariff will impose the steepest hit for the value of Canada’s energy exports, which explains why the highest vulnerabilities are for Saint John, New Brunswick and Calgary, Alberta,” explained the report.
“The massive value at play from crude oil exports (with energy exports worth over $176 billion in 2024) and concerns of passing higher gas prices onto Americans explain why Trump applied a lower tariff on Canada’s energy exports (10 per cent versus 25 per cent for all other export categories),” it added.
Seafood and forestry products are New Brunswick’s other top exports to the U.S., and beef is also a major export for Calgary.
Cities in Southwestern Ontario nabbed the third to sixth spots. The BDL says Windsor, Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, Brantford and Guelph’s economies all depend heavily on auto production, which involves plenty of two-way trade with the U.S.
The cities that won’t be hit as hard by U.S. tariffs have more diversified trade patterns, according to the BDL’s analysis.
“Several of these cities are located on Canada’s coasts, exporting more to Asia from the West Coast, or more to Europe from the East Coast,” reads the report.
This includes cities like Victoria, Nanaimo and Kamloops in British Columbia, and Halifax and Nova Scotia on the East Coast.
In Ontario, Sudbury is relatively safe as it exports nickel and copper to other international markets beyond the United States.
