Lobbyists go to work for Canada tariff carveouts

Companies that do business with Canada, and the lawmakers who represent them, are ramping up their lobbying for carveouts from new US tariffs on Canada .

The US levies on wine, dairy and more affect only a sliver of goods, but they could have an outsize impact on select states, particularly when combined with Canada's retaliatory tariffs . It's unclear whether US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will grant any of the exemption requests — neither the US nor Canada wants to show "holes in the tariff wall," in the words of Baker Donelson's Lee Smith, a former Commerce Department official.

While both sides try to hold firm, lawmakers continue to nudge Greer. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., previously wrote to him expressing concern over imports like road salt . Now, those conversations have taken on a fresh urgency, with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, urging Greer to scrap the new tariffs entirely .

"Any business that has a Washington lobbyist on speed dial is looking for a carveout, and I'm telling all of those businesses: 'You go, girl,'" the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce's Sandy Baruah said.

One industry representative put it another way: "I've been telling everyone I talk to for the past year-and-a-half, 'Don't use any of the E-words.' You're just going to get laughed out of the room if you come in and say, 'I need an exception or exclusion.'"

With US and Canadian officials still at odds, some companies are increasingly concerned that the two countries may not ink a trade deal before President Donald Trump leaves office. Consumer Technology Association Vice President of International Trade Ed Brzytwa posited that the time between rollouts could spur "a downward spiral" of retaliation.

"I don't know how this is going to evolve in a mutually productive fashion," Brzytwa said.

Already, the US is eyeing additional trade penalties on Canada. White & Case's David Bond predicted that officials would raise the tariffs already in effect, as Trump threatened Monday, "rather than trying to expand the scope of the tariffs to include other products."

Canada's levies, announced weeks before the midterms, are poised to hit vulnerable Republicans particularly hard. Bond pointed to purple states like Wisconsin, which exports dairy, and Maine, which exports seafood.

"The Canadian tactic is to try to get Congress to lobby on their behalf," Mayer Brown's Warren Payne said. He predicted that the strategy would prove less effective than it has in the past: "It is not the same Congress as the first Trump administration, and they're just not getting the level of support from Congress that they got the first time around."