After months of trade war back-and-forth, the impact of tariffs is starting to make its way onto our dining room tables, according to experts working in the Canadian food and grocery industry.
Small grocers in particular have been paying more for the products that line their shelves, said Gary Sands, senior vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers. While a number of produce items from the U.S. aren’t tariffed, fresh produce that is taxed has seen the most immediate increase, Sands said, given that it is perishable and cycles through stores quickly.
And because many of Canada’s 6,900 independent grocers operate on slim profit margins of around two per cent — much smaller than the margins in many other sectors — those increases are being passed on to consumers, Sands added.
“When you’re on that kind of a margin, if you’re being handed increases by … the food manufacturers of, you know, four or five, six, sometimes double-digit [per cent] increases, you’re passing that on to the consumer and there’s just no way to get around that,” Sands said.
As part of Canada’s response to U.S. tariffs, the federal government imposed 25 per cent tariffs on $30 billion worth of U.S. goods on March 4. A number of food products are part of that list of affected goods — including orange juice, some berries, nuts, ketchup, shrimp and more. Those counter-tariffs are starting to show up in the supply chain.
On top of that, consumer price index data also indicates a slight increase in food prices. In February, the price of food purchased from stores was up by 2.8 per cent from February 2024. In March, the year-over-year price increase had risen to 3.2 per cent.
Stuart Smyth, an agricultural and resource economics professor at the University of Saskatchewan, said tariffs likely had an impact on that.
“We’ve had this threat of tariffs really since early February now,” Smyth said. “It’s on and it’s off and it’s on and it’s off, so I think that uncertainty is having a factor on the pricing of a lot of goods.”
The price increase on tariff-impacted items is also becoming visible on grocery store shelves. In the case of orange juice, for example, American products are often priced higher than those made elsewhere.
A comparison of pulp-free orange juices listed on the Loblaws website showed significant price differences between products marked “Prepared in Canada” and those from the United States labelled as being impacted by tariffs.
A President’s Choice brand pulp-free orange juice and an equivalent from Simply Orange — both identified as being prepared in Canada — were priced at $5 ($0.32 per 100ml) and $7.69 ($0.50 per 100ml) respectively. Meanwhile, the U.S.-made Tropicana pulp-free orange juice was priced at $8.72 ($0.66 per 100ml).
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