The other measure

The US tariffs that came first

Everything else on this site is about what Canada charges on American goods at the Canadian border. This page is about the measure that provoked it - the American duties on Canadian goods, in force since 22 August 2026. A Canadian shopper does not pay these. A Canadian exporter, and the people who work for one, very much do.

Read this first: you are probably not the one paying

This is the distinction the rest of the page depends on.

Canada's counter-tariffs and the US tariffs are not two halves of one bill. They are collected at opposite borders, from opposite people.

The Canadian surtax is charged when goods enter Canada, and it is paid by whoever imports them - a retailer, a business, or you personally on a parcel or at the airport. That is the measure this site exists to map, and it is the one that moves a price tag in front of you.

The American duties described on this page are charged when goods enter the United States, and they are paid by the US importer of record. No Canadian consumer is ever billed one of them. What reaches Canadians runs through the economy instead: cancelled orders, squeezed margins, reduced shifts and layoffs in the exposed sectors. That harm is real, and it is also the reason these duties are not in the directory - the directory answers "what does this add to what I am buying", and here the honest answer is nothing directly.

What the measure is

On 20 July 2026 the White House issued three proclamations imposing an additional 50% duty on specified Canadian goods, under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 - a rarely used provision that lets the President impose duties of up to 50% on a country found to be discriminating against American commerce. The stated justification was Canada's "discriminatory treatment of American products", naming tariffs, quotas and restrictions said to disadvantage US exports while favouring other countries.

One proclamation was framed around alcoholic beverages, one around dairy, and one around motor vehicles. Section 338 requires collection to begin thirty days after proclamation, which set 19 August 2026; a short suspension moved the start to 12:01 a.m. Eastern on 22 August 2026. The duty is charged on top of any ordinary duty that already applies, on goods entered for consumption or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption.

The measure covers roughly $27.6 billion in Canadian goods. That figure is worth remembering, because it is the same number Canada matched: the counter-tariffs in force since 8 September apply to $27.6 billion of American goods, dollar for dollar.

CUSMA is not a way out of this one either

The calculator makes this point about the Canadian surtax, and it holds on the American side too, for a different reason. The White House fact sheet states the duties apply to Canadian goods regardless of whether a good originates under USMCA.

So the trade agreement does not exempt goods from either measure. On the Canadian side CUSMA's marking rules are what define the goods caught; on the American side the agreement is simply overridden. Two different mechanisms, the same wrong assumption to avoid.

The sector name tells you very little - again

The same gap this site documents in Canada's list, running the other way.

This site exists because Canada announced sectors and legislated tariff items, and the two did not match. The American measure has the identical problem, and in one case it is close to comic.

The proclamation framed around motor vehicles is the broadest of the three - and passenger vehicles and their parts are excluded from it, because they are already caught by separate Section 232 tariffs. What its annex actually reaches, across chapters 4 to 97, includes cement, plywood, furniture, cosmetics, textiles, jewellery, toys and wigs. A Canadian furniture maker is inside the "motor vehicles" proclamation. A Canadian car plant, for this measure, is not.

The alcoholic beverages proclamation likewise reaches past beer, wine and spirits into certain wood and paper products, and the dairy one past dairy into caseins, sugar-containing products and non-alcoholic beverages. If you want to know whether a specific good is caught, the annex and the tariff heading are the only things that answer it. The name of the proclamation does not.

What is carved out

The exclusions are real and substantial. The fact sheet names energy, potash, goods already subject to Section 232 tariffs, and certain other goods including fish and critical minerals. The exclusion headings also carve out goods under the WTO Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft (unmanned aircraft excepted), passenger vehicles and parts, specified wood products, heavy-duty vehicles and buses, semiconductor articles, and patented pharmaceuticals.

Duty drawback and Foreign Trade Zone treatment may reduce exposure for some importers, which is a question for a US customs broker rather than for this page.

How the two measures are wired together

Canada's surtax is not a separate quarrel. The Canada Border Services Agency says so directly in its accounting notice for the measure, Customs Notice 26-23:

"The surtax is introduced by Canada in response to the U.S.' imposition of Section 338 tariffs on goods imported into the U.S. from Canada. The goods subject to Canada's surtax are drawn from those targeted by U.S. Section 338 and Section 232 tariffs, with the surtax applicable to each product generally corresponding to the U.S. tariff rate."

That sentence explains something about the Canadian list that is otherwise puzzling: why it has three rate bands rather than one. The 15%, 25% and 50% bands are not a Canadian judgment about which American goods most deserve a tariff. They are a mirror of the American rate on the matching Canadian good. When you look up a category in the directory and find it at 25% rather than 50%, that is usually what you are seeing.

If you are on the wrong end of this

The people these duties actually reach are Canadian exporters and the people they employ. Two things on this site are for them rather than for shoppers:

What this page is not

This page is not machine-checked, and the rest of the site is. Every rate in the directory is validated on each build against a stored copy of the Department of Finance list, and the build refuses to ship if a single one disagrees. There is no equivalent authority file here: the US tariff schedule is not retrieved, not stored, and not diffed, so nothing on this page carries that guarantee. It is a sourced summary, current as of 10 September 2026, and it should be read as journalism rather than as a compliance answer.

Do not use this page to classify goods. Whether a particular Canadian product is caught depends on its heading in the US tariff schedule and on the annex to the relevant proclamation. That is a question for a US customs broker or a ruling, and getting it wrong is expensive in the direction that hurts.

Sources