About

How this site checks its own work

Two claims get made here - what is tariffed, and where things are made. They are established in completely different ways, and one of them is much weaker than the other. This page says which, and how to tell.

What this is

An independent, one-person project about Canada's counter-tariffs on US goods, which take effect 8 September 2026. It lists what the measures actually cover, and for the categories they do cover, what you might buy instead.

It exists because of a specific gap. The measures were announced by sector - appliances, personal care, electronics. What carries legal force is a list of 893 specific tariff items published by the Department of Finance, and that list is considerably narrower than the sector language implies. Reading it changed nine of the first sixteen categories on this site, and four of them turned out not to be covered at all. Those corrections were left visible rather than quietly edited.

Claim one: what is tariffed

This one is strong, and it is checked automatically.

Every rate on this site is read from the Department of Finance list at the tariff-item level, not from reporting about it. The list is retrieved by a script, stored in the repository, and every rate and every claim of absence is compared against it whenever the site is built.

  1. A rate that does not match the official list fails the build. The site cannot be published with a rate that has drifted.
  2. Claims of absence are checked too. Saying a category is not on the list is the most useful thing this site does and the easiest thing to get wrong, so those are verified against the same file - if an item quietly appears on the list, the build breaks.
  3. Wording for absent items comes from the CBSA Customs Tariff schedule, because the Finance list carries heading text only for items it includes. An absence is confirmed against the schedule rather than assumed.
  4. Every entry shows the tariff items behind its rate, so you can check any claim here against the government's own page in about a minute. Please do.

Claim two: where things are made

This one is weaker, it is checked by a human, and it is dated.

Country of origin cannot be automated. It is researched by reading what manufacturers publish about themselves, and it goes stale without announcement - a company can move a production line and tell nobody. So every origin claim on this site carries a source, the date it was checked, and a confidence label describing how good the sourcing is, separately from what is being claimed:

  1. Confirmed by the maker - the manufacturer states it on their own site or press material.
  2. Reported by a third party - a credible outside source says so, or the manufacturer claims it in general terms without specifics.
  3. Not verified - an absence of evidence is being recorded, not evidence.

A row nobody has been able to verify is shown as unverified rather than hidden. That is deliberate: a directory that quietly guesses is worse than one that admits a gap. Where no Canadian manufacturer of something could be sourced, the entry says so and asks for one.

Nothing here is sourced to a claim this site invented. If a manufacturing location could not be established from something the company or a credible third party actually published, the row says it could not be established.

The mistake this site exists to correct

A US brand is not the same thing as a US-origin good. These surtaxes apply to goods by country of origin. They do not apply to companies. An American brand manufacturing in Mexico is not covered; a German or Korean brand manufacturing in Tennessee is.

So "avoid American brands" is the wrong rule and it costs money in both directions. Much of what is sold here under American names is built elsewhere and is outside these measures entirely. Most entries on this site exist to show where that instinct misfires.

How it is funded

Nothing, currently. There are no affiliate links on this site today, no ads, and no paywall. Every link goes straight to the manufacturer.

The intention is affiliate funding where a program exists, and if that happens two things will be true: the disclosure at the foot of every page will change to say so, and any individual affiliate link will be labelled as one where it appears. The listings are built before the links are - a product does not get onto this site, or stay on it, because it pays. Several of the strongest entries here are for industrial suppliers and appliance manufacturers with no affiliate program of any kind, and some of the most useful rows actively talk you out of a purchase.

What this is not

Not a government service. This is an independent site with no connection to the Department of Finance, the CBSA, or any other agency. For anything commercial, use the official list and Canada's Customs Tariff directly.

Not legal, customs or tax advice. Tariff classification is a specialist job and the correct code for a specific shipment is a question for a customs broker.

Not a permanent state of affairs. The list can be amended, and remission orders commonly follow a round of counter-tariffs. A comparable round in 2025 was largely reversed within months. Everything here is dated for that reason.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, please say so and it will be fixed and the change noted. That applies especially to origin claims: if you manufacture something listed here and the location is wrong or out of date, tell us and it will be corrected quickly. Evidence that a company publishes about itself outranks anything inferred.

Journalists, customs brokers and importers are welcome to the underlying item-level data. It is more detailed than what the pages show.

Contact: [email protected]