Agricultural equipment is a named category on Canada’s counter-tariff list. If your next machine or major part comes from an American manufacturer, that is a direct hit.
In force since 8 September · what hit farms
- Agricultural equipment — named explicitly in Canada’s countermeasures
- Steel and aluminum derivatives — parts, fixings, structures, bins
- Dairy including cheese — 25% on cheese and curd, 50% on concentrated milk and cream
- Electronics — precision ag, monitors, controllers
And the exclusions that matter: potash and fish are carved out of the US measure entirely. If somebody has told you your fertilizer is tariffed, check which fertilizer and which direction before you act on it. This is being charged at the border now, not something arriving later in the year.
What we do about it: we work out which of your inputs and outputs are actually captured, build you a private AI knowledge base on your own invoices and buyer agreements, and scope what to build next. The review also covers who else in the world would buy what you grow. See what you receive →
What this actually does to an operation
Farming has the least ability to react in-season of any sector here. Inputs are committed in spring, the crop or herd is what it is by September, and the price is set by a market that does not care what your costs did. Talks between Ottawa and Washington have broken down, so plan on this lasting rather than lifting. That makes accurate forward planning worth more here than almost anywhere.
- Equipment and parts inflate. Machinery components face duty and longer lead times. A part that grounds a combine during harvest costs vastly more than its invoice.
- Input costs move unevenly. Some products are captured, some are not, and the difference is origin rather than category. Guessing costs money in both directions.
- Single-buyer risk is the real exposure. Producers shipping only into the US market face duty on captured categories with nowhere else to send it. Concentration ends operations; the rate alone rarely does.
Three things to do this week
- Price your next input order and confirm origin. Fertilizer, chemical and feed pricing is moving unevenly by product and supplier, and origin determines whether a counter-tariff applies at all.
- Stock the critical parts before the season that needs them. The parts that stop a harvest are usually cheap, specific and impossible to source quickly under duty and delay.
- Identify a second buyer for anything sold only into the US. This is the one that takes months, so it is the one to start now.
What it looks like in practice
Worked example · a 90-acre highbush blueberry farm that also keeps bees
Ninety acres in the Fraser Valley, about 540,000 lb of berries a year. Roughly 60% goes out frozen to a processor, the rest fresh to two wholesalers. Seventy hives produce about 3,000 kg of honey, sold at the gate, at markets and by mail order at $18 a jar. Four permanent staff and about thirty at harvest. Something close to 35% of revenue comes from US buyers.
The honey is caught and the berries might not be. Honey is one of the 554 confirmed Section 338 subheadings, at 50%. Section 338 works by subheading, not by category, so frozen berries may sit off the list entirely. Nobody has checked this farm’s actual classification.
The mail-order jars are losing money one parcel at a time. The US $800 de minimis exemption ended on 29 August 2025. Every parcel now clears formally with a merchandise processing fee of about US$7.85 on a manual entry, plus duty. One documented case saw a $37 item land at $60.17.
Australia is not the answer, whatever the seasons say. Opposite seasons and no translation make it look obvious, but freight and strict biosecurity are the real obstacles, and at this volume we could not make the container math work. Rule it out for now and revisit at scale.
Then the other half. This farm genuinely exports, and Japan is the concrete route: under the CPTPP the Japanese tariff on frozen blueberries went from 9.6% to zero immediately, so the frozen line lands duty-free rather than paying a tenth of its value at the dock. Canada already sells Japan roughly $3.9 billion a year in agricultural products, and CanExport SMEs offers up to $50,000 to enter a new export market — its most recent intake closed on 31 August 2026, so the job this winter is having the file ready for the next one.
What we would build:
- A classification sheet holding every saleable line — fresh, frozen, honey, wax — against its actual HS subheading and the Section 338 list, so the farm knows which lines are caught and which were never on it.
- A parcel calculator on the honey shop that shows duty and the US$7.85 processing fee before the customer clicks buy, and prints the HS code on the label, which US Customs has required on all cross-border shipments since 1 September.
- A Japan documentation pack for the frozen line: lot codes, cold-chain records and the CPTPP origin paperwork a Japanese importer asks for on the first call.
- A per-channel margin model, so frozen-to-Japan can be compared with the US processor on real freight numbers instead of hope, before acreage is committed in spring.
The honey problem is real, the berry problem may not exist at all, and both are worth knowing before next season is committed.
What you receive
Six things, built for your operation, starting within 48 hours of checkout.
The core is a written review: deep research across your inputs, equipment and markets, with a human checking every finding against the actual schedules and discarding what is wrong — including telling you what is not captured, which for agriculture is often the more useful half. You also get a private AI knowledge base trained on your website, input invoices, equipment list and buyer agreements — yours to keep, and able to answer “which of our inputs moved, and what are the non-US alternatives?” with a source you can check. Running through both is a scoped plan of what we would build, with real hour estimates.
Alongside those: a slide deck for the lender or the family, a one-page infographic, and video and audio overviews.
See a complete worked example →
What we would build for your operation
- An input cost tracker monitoring fertilizer, chemical, feed and fuel pricing by supplier and origin, alerting you when a forward purchase beats waiting.
- A parts and downtime planner tracking critical spares against equipment schedules so season-stopping parts are on the shelf before the season starts.
- A buyer and export route finder mapping domestic and non-US buyers with landed-cost comparison per route.
- A margin forecasting dashboard modelling season margin against live input costs and commodity pricing, so a bad year is visible in March rather than November.
And beyond tariffs: the record-keeping, compliance or direct-sales systems you have been putting off. See our case studies.
And the other half — who else would buy this?
Canada already sells Japan roughly $3.9 billion a year in agricultural products, mostly canola seed, pork and wheat, and under the CPTPP the Japanese tariff on frozen blueberries went from 9.6% to zero the day the deal took effect, canola oil phases out over five years, and beef drops from 38.5% to 9% over fifteen. Those buyers were there before this year and will be there after it; the part most operations have never done is the paperwork, the certification and the introduction, and that is learnable work rather than luck.
CETA leaves 98% of EU tariff lines duty-free for Canadian goods.
Japan
Canada’s biggest non-US farm buyer, and a wheat quota rising to 53,000 tonnes.
Australia & NZ
Opposite seasons and no translation, but strict biosecurity at the dock.
Getting found
How a buyer in Osaka or Rotterdam finds your operation at all.
Two things worth knowing
There is money for equipment and pivots
$7.5 billion in federal support, including non-repayable contributions up to $3 million and a $2 billion fund for shovel-ready capital projects. The full list →
New buyers take a season to find
Which is exactly why the work starts before you need them, not after. Selling beyond the US →
Questions we get asked
Is potash affected?
Potash is explicitly excluded from the US Section 338 measure, along with energy, fish and critical minerals. Canada’s counter-tariffs are a separate matter and should be checked for any US-sourced product.
Does this affect supply-managed dairy operations?
The US Dairy Proclamation targets Canada’s tariff rate quota system directly, so the policy environment around supply management is under active pressure. Day to day, most Canadian dairy operations feel this through equipment and input costs rather than duty on their own milk.
Should we forward-buy inputs for next season?
Where storage and cash flow permit, forward buying can lock in cost. Against that sit carrying cost, shelf life and the real possibility of carve-outs lowering prices later. Worth modelling with your actual numbers rather than deciding on instinct.
Do I have to hire you for software afterwards?
No. The plan is written to be useful whether or not you ever work with us.
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Related
- Restaurants and bars
- Grocery and local retail
- Logistics and freight
- The full rules, in plain English
- Where else in the world would buy this?
The worked example above is an illustration, not a client, and every tariff fact in it is real. Operational and strategic guidance from a software studio, not legal, customs, or tax advice. Confirm classification and duty liability with a licensed customs broker. Last reviewed 11 September 2026.