Tariffs throw US, Canadian farm machinery manufacturers into turmoil

Ed White

Sat, Apr 5, 2025, 3:08 AM 3 min read

By Ed White

REGINA, Saskatchewan (Reuters) - All astir a caller workplace amusement successful Canada, instrumentality salespeople struggled to plaything deals with farmers disquieted astir tariffs.

With immoderate combines costing much than $800,000, a astonishment terms hike from a tariff would beryllium a deed astir workplace budgets cannot easy take.

Canada was spared the Trump administration's wide planetary tariffs connected April 2 but faces tariffs connected alloy and aluminum exports to the U.S. arsenic good arsenic connected autos not compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement connected trade.

As of Friday, Canadian farmers said they were unclear whether cultivation instrumentality is taxable to the duties oregon to Canada's retaliatory tariffs. Sorting retired the details could instrumentality weeks.

Meanwhile, farmers' appetite for caller combines, tractors and different workplace instrumentality has slumped, and manufacturers are pulling back.

In March, Case IH, an cultivation instrumentality shaper based successful Racine, Wisconsin, and owned by planetary elephantine CNH Industrial, notified hundreds of workers successful North Dakota and Minnesota of layoffs. The institution did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.

The uncertainty is scaring disconnected farmers from buying instrumentality imported from the U.S., farmers and salespeople said successful interviews.

In Saskatchewan, the Canadian state wherever overmuch of the country's outpouring wheat, canola and durum is grown for export, farmers volition beryllium precise cautious astir superior spending, said Bill Prybylski, president of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, with tens of thousands of members, arsenic helium gestured his thumb towards a elephantine greenish John Deere harvester astatine the March workplace show.

Elsewhere wrong the show's teeming halls, farmers kicked the tires and tracks of harvester harvesters, seeders, sprayers and rockpickers they would emotion to buy, but fewer did.

Manufacturers, too, were grappling with fears of getting caught connected the incorrect broadside of a tariff.

"We person a batch of balls successful the aerial close present and we don't truly cognize wherever they're going to land," said Derek Molnar, selling manager for rockpicker shaper Degelman Industries, successful beforehand of a show of his company's agleam yellowish workplace implements.

With machinery purchases often negotiated months up to a twelvemonth oregon much earlier delivery, the hazard that large tariffs could beryllium plunked connected a merchandise erstwhile it arrives is excessively costly.

"We personally backed off" connected buying caller workplace machinery, said Gunter Jochum, a Manitoba farmer. "We decided to bent connected to our combines longer."

Jochum, similar astir farmers, buys machinery from astir the world: Claas combines made successful Germany and the U.S.; American-made AGCO tractors and Case sprayer; a Canadian Bourgault seeder.