On August 19, a new round of US tariffs kicks in - 50% on a list of Canadian goods that's wider than people think. Energy, potash, fish, and critical minerals are excluded, but a lot of what's affected is stuff that used to be protected under USMCA, the trade agreement that was supposed to make North American supply chains predictable.
That predictability is gone, at least for now, and it's not just a headline - it's the kind of thing that makes a manufacturer sit down and re-price everything, or start asking whether it's worth sourcing from Canada at all.
The federal government's response is the part that actually caught our attention. Ottawa set up a Strategic Response Fund last year - originally $2 billion, aimed mostly at protecting the auto sector and the roughly 700 parts suppliers tied to it. That fund has since grown to $5 billion and expanded well past autos, now covering steel, aluminum, and other manufacturing sectors directly exposed to US trade action.
A second wave of funding proposals opens this fall, run jointly with regional development agencies. Whatever you think of the tariffs themselves, $5 billion is a real number, and it's a real signal that someone in government thinks Canadian manufacturing is worth defending with more than a press release.
Here's the thing: we didn't build our supply chain because we saw this coming. We built it because it was the right way to make underwear well - labels from Markham, waistband and thread from Montreal, sewing done in Scarborough, all of it close enough that Sarah and her team can actually see the product being made, catch a problem before it ships, and know the people doing the work. That was true in a boring, low-drama way for years before "buy Canadian" was a headline and long before a tariff deadline made staying local look strategic instead of just sensible.
That's not a knock on brands that source globally - plenty of good reasons exist to do that. But it does mean we're watching this tariff moment from a different seat than most apparel companies our size. We're not scrambling to find a domestic supplier before August 19, because we never left. The fund, the tariffs, the trade uncertainty, all of it is happening around a decision we already made.
Let's be honest, we don't know exactly how this shakes out over the next few months. Trade negotiations are ongoing, the tariff rate could shift, and "wait and see" is genuinely the advice most manufacturing advisors are giving right now, including to us in some corners of what we do. But the parts of our supply chain that are entirely Canadian - the parts that aren't exposed to a US tariff line at all - those aren't a hedge we scrambled to build this summer. They're just how we've always done it.
If you've been reading "Made in Canada" as a nice-to-have marketing line, this is a decent moment to think of it as a supply chain decision instead - one that either insulates a company from this kind of shock or doesn't. Ours does. That's not luck. It's just where we chose to build.
-Sarah+Rob
Sources: The Deep Dive - Carney announces $2B auto industry protection plan | PM.gc.ca - Strategic Response Fund auto industry strategy | CNN Business - Trump's 50% tariffs on Canada | Surface & Panel - expanded US tariffs on Canadian goods | CTMA - Key trade & tariff updates for Canadian manufacturers