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The Canada–U.S. trade relationship took a sharp turn this month. After talks between Ottawa and Washington collapsed, the United States imposed a 50% tariff on roughly $27–28 billion worth of Canadian goods effective August 22 – covering categories like furniture, plastics, plywood, electrical equipment, dairy, alcohol, building materials, and apparel, with no expiry date attached. Canada responded on August 25 with its own countermeasures on more than 700 products, set to take effect September 8.
Here's the part that matters most for our market: this round of tariffs lands unevenly across the country, and Alberta is not where the heaviest damage is concentrated.
Economic analysis from RBC points to plastics, electrical machinery, furniture, and wood products as the hardest-hit sectors – industries that are disproportionately based in Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia. A separate national job-loss estimate circulating this week (nearly 90,000 positions at risk) similarly flags Ontario, Quebec, and B.C. as facing the biggest hits, largely tied to manufacturing, auto parts, and electronics supply chains centered in those provinces.
Alberta isn't immune –our exposure runs more narrowly through energy and steel-adjacent construction inputs, and any slowdown in national economic sentiment can still cool buyer confidence here too.
But the concentrated pain in Central and West Coast manufacturing hubs is a meaningfully different story than what's playing out in Calgary and the rest of Alberta, where the resale housing market continues to hold up better than in tariff-exposed provinces.
What to watch: the Bank of Canada has held its policy rate at 2.25% through the summer, balancing tariff-related economic drag against still-sticky inflation. Crude oil, meanwhile, has actually pushed toward multi-month highs, supported by geopolitical supply concerns – a dynamic that, if sustained, tends to be constructive for Alberta's economy and, by extension, local housing demand.
What we may see over the next while: potentially higher interprovincial migration due to damaging effects of tariffs and job-losses. We may see a squeeze in inventory of properties in the low-to-mid price range as folks that are hit hard and need to move provinces due to credit / job impacts.
