On Wednesday, April 2, 2025, all eyes were on the US and its expected tariff announcements.
I'm not saying this because I live in the US and I have an overinflated sense of this country's importance in the world. Rather, I say this because the scope of those tariffs was expected to affect trade with most other nations in the world, although to what exact degree was largely kept unclear until the actual time of the announcement. If we pretend the world and all its nations are a squabbling family, we're the drunk uncle you laugh nervously about inviting to the party, because you're not sure how we're going to act.
And sure enough, the official announcement of the tariffs did, indeed, include a little something for almost every nation outside US borders, with a few notable exceptions.
If you want to see how any particular nation fared, the full list with country names and percentages is here. (Not sure how the population of approximately 3.5 thousand people in the Falkland Islands are feeling about that 41% tariff, but apparently, it's now a thing.)
So far, many commentators have jumped on the math done to determine these tariffs, with most concluding that the seemingly random amounts appear to have been determined by dividing a given trade deficit by the amount of imports the US receives from the country in question. But we're not here to talk about that.
Instead, we're here to talk about Canada, which you may notice is completely absent from this new list of tariffs.
Why nothing more for Canada or Mexico on April 2? For the moment, at least, the existing tariffs already imposed on both nations were deemed sufficient.
Of course, if you pay attention to news media outside the American sphere, you'll know that both Canada and Mexico quite naturally think otherwise.
In fact, as Canada moves toward its own election for prime minister in the coming months, commentators there have observed that Prime Minister Mark Carney's current position and popularity have a lot to do with his perceived strength in standing up to the US and its numerous demands—including the 25% tariffs that went into effect on March 4, 2025 for imports from both Canada and Mexico, excluding a 10% tariff on Canadian energy imports.
But while the much-anticipated tariffs announcement was grabbing most of the attention on April 2, some US senators actually tried to fight back against the previously imposed tariffs against Canadian imports. Democrats unanimously voted for a resolution that would, if passed, end the president's emergency declaration on fentanyl trafficking, which is how he justified Canadian tariffs in the first place.
And amazingly, four Republicans joined them in this fight (Collins, McConnell, Murkowski, and Paul). The resolution passed the Senate 51 to 48 (pause for applause). Unfortunately, the resolution is not expected to pass through the House of Representatives. It would have to clear that hurdle first before being signed into law by the President, which is also highly unlikely.
For Canada's part, the prime minister announced a new 25% tariff on vehicle imports from the US. He added that neither auto parts from the US, nor any vehicles or parts from Mexico would be included in these countermeasures.
"Given the prospective damage to their own people, the American administration should eventually change course. But I don't want to give false hope," Prime Minister Carney said. He also went on to call this entire situation " a tragedy." I can't say that I disagree; a lot of regular people are going to be hurt by these acts, both in the US and elsewhere.
Since we now know that there is a 10% baseline tariffs increase on imports from many countries, as well as the fact that several countries on the list have been singled out with even higher tariffs—and given that powersports is a global business—our small corner of the world will most definitely be impacted.
When tariff talk with this new administration first arose, I began pulling data and chatting with people in the industry to try to calculate what kinds of impacts this could have. But of course, as with all the economists and finance folks, with no clear guidance on what was going to happen, most people didn't feel comfortable predicting much of anything.
It's one thing if you know that N effect will happen on Z date, but no one could solve for the variables in their equations ahead of time in this case, simply because it was so chaotic.
Now that we know what the amounts will be (at least, for the time being), I'll have a more detailed report for you very soon here on RideApart. Stay tuned for a detailed Data Deep Dive in the coming days.
