Companies on both sides of the Canadian borders and the United States are fighting. It is not just a tariff. These are the widely new compliance requirements that they have to confront, and the bureaucracy that is just like companies. This costs time and money when companies cannot lose either.
The central board of the federal government position is that Canada has obtained comprehensive exemptions for the American definitions of the vast majority of products.
“Canada currently has the best deal from any of the United States trading partners in the world – 85 percent of our trade with the United States has no tariff,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said this week.
Don’t say that to Patrick Volop. It has passed the process of compatibility with the Canada and Mexican agreement (CUSMA), the commercial deal that replaced NAFTA in 2020.
Fulop’s Company, Smarty, is based on Quebec, what he calls a struggle doll. It is like a punching bag in a human form, but it is specifically designed so that MMA fighters can practice struggling and wrestling moves. Seventy percent of his sales go to US agents.
The shock of definitions was bad enough. What made the clay worse, how it was applied was arbitrary.

Fulop has participated in dozens of bills with CBC news that shows the amount of American customs and the protection of the borders that was claiming to be a city of shipments. After the page, the page showed different accounts using different tariff codes. One bills imposed $ 66, citing one set of definitions. Last charge 555 dollars using a different set of definitions. Both of them had the same precise product $ 250.
“We are talking about 100 to 200 percent. I think on average that we have 150 percent of that we are paying these requests. It has no meaning at all. There is no way Canadian companies can continue to serve the American customer in this environment,” he said.
FULOP charges its products through UPS that also acts as a mediator and receives import duties. UPS said in an email message that he was “actively” working to solve his concerns.
But on its website, UPS says that duties will be evaluated based on effective tariff rates or specific duties depending on the country of origin.
This has left a great room for interpretation and confusion about the rate that must be applied to the products. This is exactly a kind of commercial experts who warn them.
A “class on” bureaucracy
Scott Lincum, Vice President at the Kato Institute in Washington, says all companies, brokers and trucks have no idea how to address the appropriate prices.
He said: “I have already moved almost overnight, which is a very simple system to a system that contains a layer of bureaucracy, which is very complicated and constantly changes.”

Lincicome says it was quite clear as definitions were applied in specific cases. There were tight issues and sizes of commercial documents that were shining clearly how the system works. Since US President Donald Trump began to impose definitions last winter, he says that companies had to refresh through different types of definitions imposed at different rates of different countries and different products.
“Now, it is more complicated because the product may only have a mutual tariff, but the average section 232. There is a country rate, I mean, there are now 100 different country rates,” he said.
In some cases, these definitions are supposed to be stacked, that is, an addition to each other.
Shipping companies that accept the product in the United States ultimately are responsible for making sure to pay the appropriate tariff. Therefore, some experts say that these companies simply charge the maximum rate and allow the source to classify whether they should get a recovery.
Commercial lawyer Mark Warner warned of this. He has also wondered whether every company claims to be established in CUSMA already meets the standards. Warner says there are severe penalties for all participants in the already incompatible charging products.
“With criminal penalties for fraudulent compliance, I do not think that logistical services companies want to bear any risks,” said Warner, the manager at Mao Lu in Toronto.
Whatever the reason, the result is more uncertainty. This is just another obstacle to trade.
Again in Smarty, wrestling, Volube scrambles to find a solution. It covers the costs of customs tariffs for current requests, but it has doubled its price to cover future requests. Meanwhile, it enhances its local marketing and tries to find new customers in other markets.
But he is often frustrated because the compliance of CUSMA, which he worked hard to secure, does not seem to be very worth it now.
“We thought we were getting a good deal because Kosma … was supposed to continue respect, and this is not the case,” he said.
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