The Tariff Has Moved From Maine's Blueberry Boxes to Canadian Shampoo. The Total Has Not Changed

President Trump signed a proclamation on Friday afternoon removing the additional 50 per cent duty on a list of Canadian products that includes corrugated boxes and plastic crates, packing film, plywood sheets, certain paper and paperboard, refrigeration and freezing equipment, machinery for cleaning, sorting, filling and wrapping farm produce, and fresh and dried seaweed. The same document adds a six-page annex of new products to the 50 per cent list, among them cocoa powder, shampoo, vinyl flooring, carpets, window air conditioners, certain valves, archery equipment, wooden coffins, canoes under 7.5 metres and waste and scrap. Both changes take effect at 12.01am on 30 October. The midterm elections are on 3 November.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine, seeking a sixth term in the closest race of her career, announced the exemptions on X hours before the White House published anything, saying she had "secured" relief for the state's blueberry, potato, apple and seaweed producers, who buy their harvesting boxes, packing lines and cold storage from across the border. The White House statement said the removal and the additions together "protect the economic prosperity and national security of the American people". A person familiar with the discussions told Politico that the overall amount of tariff on Canadian goods will remain unchanged, and that it has simply been transferred to different imports.

The annex lists what Canada sells to the United States in small lots and what it cannot easily redirect, which is why coffins and canoes are on it.

From the analysis

That sentence is the story. The 50 per cent duties were imposed in July under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, on a finding that Canada discriminates against American commerce in motor vehicles. Nothing about that finding changed on Friday. What changed is that an incumbent senator reported which Canadian products her constituents cannot do without, and the schedule was redrawn so that the same revenue, and the same stated retaliation, now falls on products whose American buyers are less organised, less concentrated in a swing state, or both. A tariff that can be moved from blueberry crates to coffins in an afternoon, without any change to the trade grievance it is meant to answer, is a tariff on whoever has not yet found a senator.

Ottawa has noticed. Prime Minister Mark Carney said in Istanbul this week that the US embassy's claim of Canadian interference in the midterms had no merit, and allowed that a trade deal might have to wait for a different administration. Canada dropped its own planned 25 per cent levy on Maine lobster before it took effect last month, a reciprocal gesture Collins did not mention. The administration made the same move in September, lifting duties on road salt and cement and adding others to compensate. The pattern is a tariff wall with doors that open for Republicans in border states and close behind them on everyone else.

We think the exemptions are good for Maine and bad for the argument the tariffs were supposed to make. If Canadian packing machinery and refrigeration equipment are so essential to American farmers that the duty must be lifted a week before an election, the same is true in Vermont, Michigan, Minnesota and Washington, whose growers and manufacturers were not consulted and will pay 50 per cent more for the same equipment on 30 October. The honest policy conclusion from Friday's proclamation is the one the White House will not draw: that Section 338 duties on Canadian inputs raise costs for American producers, that the administration knows it, and that the duties should go rather than circulate.

The annex lists what Canada sells to the United States in small lots and what it cannot easily redirect, which is why coffins and canoes are on it. The Bank of Canada decides on rates on Wednesday with Ontario's steel and manufacturing base as its main concern. The US Trade Representative has not said when the Section 338 finding will be reviewed. The proclamation says the President acted on new advice from senior officials. It does not say what the advice was.

The Semaform

The news

President Trump signed a proclamation on 23 October lifting the 50 per cent tariff on nine categories of Canadian products important to Maine's farmers and adding roughly 100 other Canadian goods to the list, effective 30 October, after Senator Susan Collins said she had secured the exemptions.

Sox’s view

Moving the same tariff from one set of Canadian goods to another to help one senator's constituents concedes that the duties hurt American producers while keeping them for everyone without a senator. The duties should go.

Room for disagreement

The White House and Senator Collins say the changes protect American farmers and keep pressure on Canada over motor vehicle discrimination; critics call it electoral favouritism, and Canadian officials say a shifting list makes a negotiated settlement harder.

Sources

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The Tariff Has Moved From Maine's Blueberry Boxes to Canadian Shampoo. The Total Has Not Changed

The Semaform

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