{"id":36143,"date":"2025-04-17T18:42:38","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T22:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=36143"},"modified":"2025-04-17T18:42:40","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T22:42:40","slug":"tackling-tariffs-at-the-region-leans-on-some-lessons-learned-over-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/tackling-tariffs-at-the-region-leans-on-some-lessons-learned-over-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Tackling tariffs at the Region leans on some lessons learned over pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Region of York is looking at some lessons learned from the global pandemic to address uncertainty felt by the local business community in the face of Trump tariffs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regional Council received an update on the financial situation in York Region\u2019s nine municipalities last week through a tariff lens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jonathan Wheatle, the Region\u2019s Director of Economic Strategy, said York has a \u201cstrong, diverse community\u201d of 57,000 business, but the impact of tariffs will be felt across the board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recognizing the COVID lesson that \u201cbusinesses needed information quickly and from trusted sources,\u201d their first response was to \u201cleverage our range of resources to get an understanding of the situation and the potential impact.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Region has a strong, diverse business community with 57,000 businesses. However, there are some exposures based on tariffs and counter tariffs that are being put in place,\u201d said Wheatle. \u201cWhat you see here is the Region has the third largest manufacturing hub in Ontario, the second-largest food and beverage sector in the province as well as Canada\u2019s largest auto parts and electronics manufacturing cluster. What\u2019s also noticeable is that there are over 600 foreign-based companies in the Region, approximately 60 per cent of these are from the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe President of the U.S. has stated his wish for these companies to start moving back to the U.S. That said, what we\u2019re seeing is the exposure will likely be first felt with exporters and importers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among York Region\u2019s 57,000 businesses, 2,900 are considered exporters. Broken down further, 2,400 of these 2,900 businesses export primarily to the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c80 per cent of the value of all exports totalling nearly 12 million is to the U.S.,\u201d said Wheatle. \u201cIn addition, nearly 82 per cent of all exports by value are from the manufacturing sector. Clearly our exporters and manufacturers have optimized their businesses to sell into the world\u2019s largest economy south of our border.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transportation equipment, which includes the auto sector, accounts for the largest percentage of exports at 22 per cent, followed by plastics and rubber products at 10 per cent, fabricated metal goods at nine per cent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wholesale trade accounts for 76 per cent of imports, followed by manufacturing at 16 per cent, and retail at four per cent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNearly 40 per cent of the imports are from the US, totalling $17 billion. This is where counter tariffs are likely to have the biggest impact on our importers,\u201d he continued. \u201cThere is exposure for both exporters and importers and the longer this goes on the likelier it will spill over into the rest of the economy. Here in York Region, we\u2019ve revived the Business Recovery Support Partnership or BRSP which is a collaboration of economic development stakeholders in the Region, working together to help the business community primarily during times of crisis. This includes all nine local municipalities, eight boards of trade and chambers of commerce, the workforce planning board, Venture Lab and post-secondary institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These groups have been meeting to discuss approaches and actions that \u201ccould have meaningful local impacts\u201d and they\u2019re developing short-, medium- and long-term ideas for consideration, along with research, business advocacy and communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Work includes efforts towards trade diversification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe bottom line is there is significant uncertainty and Council is committed to supporting our business community,\u201d said Wheatle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richmond Hill Mayor David West said there are \u201cunder-tapped\u201d markets for the Region and, at a recent international trade conference at which he represented the Region, \u201cCanada was really seen as the adult in the room in many conversations we had.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think there is a real significant opportunity while President Trump continues to shoot himself in the foot that we can scoop up some of the fallout from that,\u201d said West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diversification and a focus on foreign direct investment also won the support of Newmarket Mayor John Taylor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we should double down on the United States; I think most economists agree no matter how things go in the next few months, if we don\u2019t continue to try and reshape and rebalance our trading partners, I think we have missed the opportunity that comes with the challenge,\u201d he said, adding that while it sounds like the Region is \u201cdoing everything\u201d there should be \u201csome level of focus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t mean abandoning the U.S. companies in its entirety, but I do think there is a recognition beyond global Toronto that we need to put a renewed focus on increasing our trading partnerships outside the U.S. and that requires a certain type of focus and re-thinking of our current approach.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Region of York is looking at some lessons learned from the global pandemic to address uncertainty felt by the local business community in the face of Trump tariffs. Regional Council received an update on the financial situation in York Region\u2019s nine municipalities last week through a tariff lens. Jonathan Wheatle, the Region\u2019s Director of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9oX","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 10:21:23","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36144,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36143\/revisions\/36144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}