As political leaders across the country are waiting to hear the details on what the U.S. President calls retaliatory tariffs, the CEO of Economic Development Lethbridge is urging people not to panic.
Trevor Lewington says it will take some time to fully understand the implications of any announcement President Donald Trump makes. He adds no matter what is announced Wednesday, since the tariff situation started announcements have quickly been negotiated to be rolled back.
“So the initial reaction may be somewhat doom and gloom, but as we’ve seen with the counter-tariffs, the reciprocal tariffs, the U.S. seems to have backed down every time so far,” he says. “The hope is a newly elected government with a strong mandate can negotiate an end to the tariffs.”
According to Lewington, this is not new ground, as a similar situation was seen during the U.S. president’s first term when he implemented tariffs and the Canadian government was able to negotiate them.
“We ended up with a new free trade agreement. So I think, I’m cautiously optimistic that common sense will prevail and we’ll see the same kind of thing happen this time.”
Back in March when the first round of tariffs were announced by the U.S. president, Lewington announced the relaunch of the Lethbridge Economic Resilience Task Force, which is made up of a group of partner organizations who are working together to coordinate a response to the tariffs. He explains the benefit of this task force is there is one spot locally to find information on the tariffs instead of every organization producing its own tariff report or website.
“We’re trying to work together to really listen to industry, find out what businesses need, and then put those tools together and make them available.”
He says currently they are still in the first phases and are working with the provincial and federal governments to understand what they think tariffs will look like. Lewington says organizations like his are paid to plan for the worst-case scenario, but they remain optimistic and no matter what will continue to work along with their community partners to keep the community moving forward.
