Hiring and investment in the tariff crosshairs
Of the surveyed exporters sending goods to the U.S., approximately 40 per cent said they currently export products that fall under the scope of the proposed tariffs, which were announced by U.S. president Donald Trump last month and are scheduled to take effect on Aug. 19. Among those with affected products, 77 per cent expect to lose revenue if the levies proceed – and 35 per cent anticipate losing at least half of their revenues over the next 12 months, according to the CFIB report.
A separate Small Business Pulse 2026 survey by Merchant Growth, a Canadian business financing solutions firm, found that more than half of small businesses had already cut spending, and one in four had delayed hiring.
One wholesale business owner in Quebec described their bind directly in the CFIB survey: “We paid $150,000 in tariffs last year, significantly reducing our profits. Canadian suppliers cannot meet demand, leaving U.S. dependent on U.S. products while unable to absorb a 25-per-cent tariff increase. As a result, small businesses like ours must cut back on hiring and investment just to survive.”
Anxiety over trade agreement protection
Mallough says the anxiety over this round of tariffs is more acute than what came before, for a specific structural reason. “These are the first tariffs that, at this broad of a level, seem to pierce the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), which has been pretty set in place up to this point,” he says. “You’ve got businesses that have been operating business as usual with their American clients that are now suddenly being threatened with a 50-per-cent tariff, and that has them quite concerned because the pivot on something like that is not quick – if you’re going to rejig your existing contracts or seek out new supply chains or new markets, that’s not a fast process.”
The threatened tariffs also come at the same time CUSMA talks continue between the three countries, with the U.S. musing about scrapping the agreement entirely.