Tariffs could be coming from the U.S. soon following their most recent presidential election, which would have a big impact on Canada.
A 25 per cent general tariff has been floated, which would impact a number of exports to America such as oil, lumber, and other commodities.
Chris Lane, the CEO of Economic Development Regina, talks about their look into what kind of effect a tariff would have on southern Saskatchewan.
"We want to have a look at, in the event that these tariffs were imposed as president-elect Trump suggested, what would be the immediate impact in Regina and in fact all of Southern Saskatchewan. Thanks to our economists that we have in-house, we were able to spend some time understanding those numbers and it showed that the immediate effect would be a $174 million hit to the local economy here."
"Really what that means is a loss of sales of the things that we produce in southern Saskatchewan that go into the U.S. just because the tariffs would obviously undercut the market for those items and then even more troubling is the long-term knock-on effects. Businesses that actually do produce those goods, the choices that they would be forced to make around where their production is centred or shifted and obviously anything that would happen around jobs connected to that too."
For Estevan, some of the key exports that the community produces, like il and agricultural products, could be especially hard hit.
"I think really all of southern Saskatchewan and Estevan included, we are in the business in our part of the world and yours as well of growing and processing agriculture and food products, you know, extractive industries like energy and processing, and then most of that goes to the United States as well."
"So we really are living in one kind of economic region here focused on those key sectors and we're very good at it and that's why global companies headquarter in Saskatchewan and need the economy trading power of being here and being close to the United States to make those businesses work so it's our advantage, it's a geographic advantage."
"Really these companies invest in both Canada and the US to get their goods to market, and really we're treated as one kind of economic region between the northern U.S. states and Saskatchewan, and so while there's a political border, of course, tariffs really get in the way of what the intention of trade is and the ability for those businesses to grow their markets and ship their products abroad."
Lane says he hopes to see the tariffs be avoided and trade continues to flow across the border.
"We're all just sort of hoping that cooler heads prevail and there's a pathway to continue to keep the trade of goods and services between Saskatchewan and the United States free and tariff-free. So we sort of lend our support to all of the negotiations and all the advocacy surrounding that. So here's hoping that in the next few days, we can move the needle on that and hopefully avoid what would be a fairly destructive tariff imposition on Saskatchewan."