Canoes, cars, ice cream: London-area businesses face tariff turmoil

For the past few weeks at Nova Craft Canoe, sales director Steve Procunier has been paddling furiously. 

"With the tariffs hitting, we've had to do numerous trips to the States in order to get them to our dealers in time to beat the tariffs," he said. 

Since 1970, the company has built fibreglass and carbon-fibre canoes at its factory in east London. They build and sell about 2,000 canoes in a typical year and distribute them to retail dealers across North America and overseas.  

But since President Donald Trump took office, 2025 has been anything but a typical year for Nova Craft and any other local business that trades with the United States.

On Tuesday Trump's 25 per cent tariffs on most Canadian imports took effect. Ottawa has responded with counter-tariffs with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calling the U.S. tariffs a "dumb" move that will hurt both countries. 

Monday at 6:30 p.m., Nova Craft had finished production on a batch of canoes for U.S. customers in a bid to get them over the border before the tariffs kicked in. By 9:30 p.m. the load of canoes was crossing the border in a trailer heading south.

The Trump tariffs took effect at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.

The U.S. market claims about 20 per cent of Nova Craft's sales. It's a customer base the company, which has about 40 employees, has nurtured carefully over the years. 

"We have good clients down there. I've known them for years, they've become good friends," said Procunier, who travels to the U.S. regularly to deliver canoes.

"There are some customers where I'm dealing with the son after dealing with the father for years who's now retired," he said. 

He describes the tariffs as unnecessarily disruptive to Nova Craft and its customers.

"It is kind of a gut-punch," he said. 

Procunier said the tariffs won't stop him from selling to the U.S., but it will force the business to pivot. 

"We'll just have to find other markets," he said. "Overseas has become strong for us and Canada has become very loyal. We've had lots of new clients calling in the past few months asking for Canadian-made canoes. So that's a good sign."