Canada’s counter-tariffs on $27.6 billion worth of American goods take effect at 12:01 a.m. Monday, applying rates of 15, 25 and 50 per cent to imports including appliances, electronics, dairy, steel and aluminum, agricultural equipment, plastics, and pulp and paper, according to the list the Department of Finance published Aug. 25.
Global News counted roughly 700 items on that list. Finance Canada says each rate mirrors the American rate applied to the corresponding good under Washington’s Section 338 and Section 232 measures, a dollar-for-dollar design Ottawa has described as targeted rather than blanket. Canada’s earlier counter-tariffs on U.S. autos, steel and aluminum, in place since 2025, remain separately in force and are not replaced by the new list.
What most of the coverage has not spelled out is who actually writes the cheque. A counter-tariff is a surtax collected by the Canada Border Services Agency from the Canadian importer at the moment the goods cross, not from the American company that made them. The importer either absorbs the cost, finds a non-U.S. supplier, or passes it down the chain. On consumer-facing goods such as a fridge, a laptop or a case of American cheese, the last option usually wins, and the person at the end of that chain is a Canadian shopper.
That matters for how the government’s response package should be read. Alongside the tariff list, Ottawa announced $7.5 billion in new and enhanced supports for workers and businesses. The Regional Tariff Response Initiative, delivered through Canada’s seven regional development agencies, is being topped up by $1.5 billion. The maximum non-repayable contribution a business can receive rises from $1 million to $3 million, and firms can access up to $2 million in liquidity support where they can demonstrate a need.
Every one of those measures is application-based, and every one of them is aimed at a company or a worker rather than a household. There is no consumer-facing offset in the package. The price effect of the counter-tariff arrives at the shelf on Monday. The relief arrives whenever a business applies, qualifies and is approved. For anyone under 40 who rents, buys appliances secondhand and does not run a business, the asymmetry is the whole story.
There is also a history here that the announcement coverage has largely skipped. This is not Canada’s first broad round of counter-tariffs against the current U.S. administration. Ottawa imposed one in March 2025, then removed it on most U.S. imports effective Sept. 1, 2025, keeping only the measures on steel, aluminum and autos while talks continued. In between, the United States Surtax Remission Order came into force on April 16, 2025, giving time-limited relief to a wide cross-section of Canadian businesses that depend on American inputs, and to hospitals, long-term care homes and fire departments.
In other words, the last comparable round lasted about six months and was substantially unwound, and a formal escape hatch existed for importers who could show hardship. Customs advisories published since Aug. 25 suggest Ottawa intends to extend that remission framework to the new measures, though the government has not published the final terms. Whether the relief again reaches only importers, or is structured to blunt the retail effect, is the question worth watching this week.
The timing is unhelpful. Statistics Canada put annual inflation at three per cent in July, up from 2.8 per cent in June, driven mainly by gasoline. Stripping out gasoline, prices were up 2.2 per cent for a third straight month, and grocery inflation ran at 3.1 per cent. A tariff that lands on food, appliances and electronics pushes against the categories that were finally cooling.
None of that is an argument that Ottawa should not retaliate. Matching rates line by line is a defensible negotiating position, and the government has said as much. But a counter-tariff is a tax Canadians pay in the hope that Americans change course, and it deserves to be described that way rather than as a cost borne by the other side. Two questions remain open as Monday arrives: whether the remission order is broadened, and whether talks resume before the six-month mark that ended the last round.
via Global News. Tariff list, rates and support-package figures confirmed against the Department of Finance Canada announcements of Aug. 25, 2026.
