B.C. could shed thousands of jobs in the face of U.S tariffs
With a trade war between the U.S. and Canada in full swing, B.C. workers might be some of the people who bear the consequences of it.
A recent analysis from Trevor Tombe, a professor of economics at the University of Calgary, estimated that 90,000 Canadian jobs could be lost because of these tariffs.
In an article for The Hub, he wrote that the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, and B.C. could see the majority of this.
He caveated that it is hard to estimate the “precise numbers,” but he said that if tariffs remain in place for “some time” and Canadian sales to the U.S. drop, it could cause 11,000 lost jobs in B.C., in both the targeted industries and in service-sector employment.
According to a report from Deloitte published earlier this year, B.C.’s forestry sector has already felt pressure from U.S. tariffs, with B.C. forestry operations cutting production and even permanently closing mills.
However, Torsten Jaccard, a University of British Columbia professor who researches international trade, told Daily Hive that he’s less worried about B.C. than he is about other provinces.
The U.S. tariffs on Canada are “fairly targeted” on specific industries, like steel, aluminum, cars, and car parts. These industries are heavily based in Quebec and Ontario.
And while the U.S. has slapped tariffs on softwood lumber, Jaccard said that about roughly half of these exports are sent to our southern neighbour. The other half are sent to Asia.
“There are other options for us, right? It’s not impossible that we could send lumber elsewhere; we could maybe substitute to other markets that we already have a footprint in,” he said.
Further, B.C. has higher quality lumber than what the U.S. can produce domestically, so Jaccard suggested that there’s a possibility that U.S. demand for B.C.’s product will remain, even with the additional tariff.
“At the end of the day, I’m not that worried about British Columbia, and about workers losing jobs, to the extent that we can pivot to selling to markets where we already sell in Asia, that might be one way to sort of reduce some of the cost of losing demand from the United States.”
Since 2025 and the second term of the Trump administration, Jaccard said that Canada has been doing a “good job” in trying to create new trade deals and trade agreements with countries other than the U.S. For example, Asia (to which B.C. has a port) has been a focus of the Liberal government.
“Which I think is a good idea. The future of the world economy, if it isn’t already, is Southeast Asia and South Asia. And establishing as soon as possible trading relationships with those countries, regardless of what the United States does, that was always going to be a good move for Canada,” Jaccard said.
“And it’s become all the more important to do so now that the U.S. has become this unreliable trade partner.”
How did we get to this point?
On April 2, 2025, or so-called “Liberation Day,” the Trump administration enacted sweeping tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and other countries.
“And then basically the Trump administration has used the event of those tariffs to try to negotiate side deals with different countries or groups of countries. So they made a deal with Japan, with South Korea, with the EU,” Jaccard said.
While Canada has also been in on-and-off negotiations with the U.S., it has been “fighting back a bit more” than other countries, with things like counter-tariffs, alcohol bans, and procurement bans.
“The fact that we’ve been pushing back has obviously not sat very well with the Trump administration,” Jaccard said.
On July 20, U.S. President Trump threatened this new wave of tariffs on Canadian goods. And while it seemed like Canada was close to making a deal with the U.S. last Friday, they ultimately walked away — something that Jaccard thinks is a good thing, after learning some of the trade details.
“It looks like there really are no concessions coming from the United States,” he said.
“They would like to force us to adopt aspects of their foreign policy that they would like us to do, and they’re going to keep threatening us with tariffs until we do so. So really, at some point, this is not even about tariffs or trade policy per se.”
Instead, he said it is becoming clear that the U.S. is using trade policy as a tool to try to force Canada to “go along” with their foreign policy goals.
“And so I think for a while there, it seems that trade economists were the right people to talk to about this, and maybe we still are. But I think also that it’s moving quickly into other spheres of sovereignty and foreign policy that have less to do with trade and more to do with our standing as a sovereign country, basically, and our ability to dictate our own foreign policy.”
Jaccord said the details are murky, but it looks like the U.S. wanted Canada to buy defence equipment from the U.S., and threatened us with tariffs if we didn’t. Further, they also seem to want to have a say over the tariffs Canada sets on other countries.
“And in one sense, that would mean we’re just giving up our ability to set our own trade policies, which is, of course, a key part of our sovereignty.”
a