Sabrina Bandali speaks with the Globe and Mail about what Canadian goods get a reprieve from tariffs, after US President Donald Trump signed a pair of executive orders on March 6 that temporarily exempt USMCA-qualifying goods from the tariffs that he had imposed only two days earlier.
The Globe reports that even for companies whose products are likely compliant with the USMCA, it may take a considerable amount of work to pull together all the documentation and do the calculations needed to make the customs claim.
“How quick or straightforward it is for you is utterly going to depend on the product we’re talking about because rules-of-origin are specific to the product,” says Sabrina.
“Something that’s as close to a natural good as possible, like something that comes out of the ground or what have you, and there’s very little done to it, establishing its origin is very straightforward. Where rules-of-origin get more complicated is where you have goods that have lots of different parts in them, lots of different components or inputs that might come from different places, or where you have to meet calculations of value that can be complex.”
Sabrina also comments on the example of EV batteries to explain why shifting manufacturing operations is not quick or easy.
“For the electric vehicle battery supply chain, we know very well that we need to build that infrastructure in North America and that those efforts are under way. But it takes time. And if consumers want more electric vehicles before there are the plants in place to produce all of those components in North America, well, then of course foreign components are going to be required” she says.
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