Randy Booth wants to buy a new boat in Windsor, Ontario, but he can’t afford one if Canada’s retaliatory tariffs bump its price up by 25 percent. “If they hike the prices more, I’m not buying a boat,” he told the Windsor Star. “I don’t know what the world’s coming to. We’re screwed.”
Booth, pictured above, is a casualty of the new trade wars that started when President Trump said he would impose a new 25 percent tariff on Canadian steel and 10 percent on Canadian aluminum. In response, the Canadian government said it would do the same with the appropriate American metals.
But for Booth the trade wars are a double-whammy. Canada also said it would impose a 10 percent surtax on U.S.-built boats starting July 1. More than 65 percent of the new and brokerage boats sold in Canada each year come from the U.S.
Rick Layzell, CEO of the Boating Ontario Association, said he knew that at least 500 orders for new boats have been cancelled as a result. “The impact of the tariff and counter-measures are going to be devastating on the recreational boating community,” he said.
And the National Marine Manufacturers Association of Canada wrote a letter protesting the tariffs to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, saying the proposed countermeasures “will have severe negative and long-term impact to the job, taxes and tourism that recreational boating represents – and generates – across Canada.”
The NMMA said “this tariff will cause irreparable and disastrous damage to the industry, from which it would likely never recover.”
The boating industry in Canada generates $10 billion annually and employs 75,000 people. Read more:
http://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/boating-industry-dreading-new-tariffs
