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For CGT, whose product is eventually shipped back over the border into the U.S. as part of finished seats to be assembled at American auto plants, the announcement hit like a lightening bolt.

“This morning, a very excited chief financial officer came into this office saying, ‘We have a serious problem here. This is going to have a profound effect on our cost structure,’” Richardson said, sitting behind a meeting table at his bright Cambridge headquarters. “I can’t even say what ‘profound’ means yet. I just know this will have a major impact on a business like ours that thought it was doing all the right things.”

One year after the U.S. kick-started the trade wars by slapping national security tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, Canadian businesses like CGT continue to be entangled in a global web of trade offensives and retaliations that complicate supply chain management, dampen investment and tie up resources that might otherwise have been put toward business growth.

That struggle is playing out in different ways across various industries and has carried on despite the removal of some direct headwinds: the steel tariffs were scrapped in May and, after 17 months of rocky negotiations, a new North American Free Trade Agreement has been signed, if not ratified.

In the agricultural sector, the challenges might include commodity prices driven down by Trump’s trade war with Beijing, or piles of stock left unsold due to direct Chinese restrictions on Canadian goods such as canola and pork. For first-time exporters, a lack of certainty may deter them from taking the leap into new markets. And many manufacturers have to deal with the ongoing drain on resources that comes from shifting supply chains and purchasing strategies in order to avoid tariffs that may or may not be permanent.