Quebec’s Beauce region, known as a hub for business, upended by U.S. tariffs

MONTREAL — The Beauce region south of Quebec City is known for its entrepreneurial spirit and its proximity — geographically and economically — with the United States.

Now this region of rolling hills, farms and factories is bracing for an economic storm, and possibly thousands of job losses, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s imposition on Tuesday of 25 per cent across-the-board tariffs on goods and a 10 per cent levy on energy. On Wednesday, Trump announced a one-month tariff pause on vehicles.

Charles Dutil, president and CEO of Manac, a semi-trailer builder headquartered in the Beauce town of St-Georges, says people in the region have been economically intertwined with the United States for more than a century.

“This area was built around doing business with New England,” he said in a phone interview. “You leave St-Georges and it’s easier to get to Portland, Maine, than to get to Montreal. It’s easier to get to Boston than to get to Toronto.”

Dutil says the tariffs will have a direct impact on almost all businesses in the region, including his own. “There’s no way any operation can absorb 25 per cent,” he said. Even if the weak Canadian dollar reduces the impact for U.S. importers to something resembling 16 or 17 per cent, he said, “most businesses can’t absorb that. We surely can’t.”

Hélène Latulippe of the regional economic council said Beauce has more than 500 manufacturing companies, some of which depend on the United States for up to 90 per cent of their business.

“I think it’s a state of shock that’s happening right now,” she said. “Companies must be trying to find strategies, to see what’s going to happen in the coming weeks.”

A recent survey of Beauce businesses conducted by a newly formed Beauce-U.S. economic group found that more than 65 per cent of them exported directly to the United States, and one-third said the country made up more than half their sales.

Latulippe said some businesses have already seen their sales decline in recent weeks due to the uncertainty around tariffs.

Dutil said he’s felt those effects too, as fewer goods are moving and clients are hesitant to upgrade their fleets.

“There’s a lot more hesitation, and since we deal with trucking, I’ll say there’s a lot more people with the foot on the brake pedal than on the gas pedal,” he said.

The region south of Quebec City is known as a hub for business, and Latulippe said its export-heavy industries include maple syrup, steel, wood and transformed wood products, plastic and heavy equipment.

Pascal Jacques, a maple producer in the region, said he’s already decided to delay a planned investment to expand his third-generation business, Une troisième coulee. While he hasn’t felt the impact of tariffs directly yet, he says Quebec producers exported nearly half a billion dollars worth of maple syrup to the United States last year alone.

“For sure, the impact is major,” he said.

The president of the group representing Quebec maple syrup producers wrote Wednesday that 62 per cent of the province’s maple syrup exports go to the U.S. market. “In 2024, 100 million pounds of maple syrup were sold there for a value of $450 million,” Luc Goulet wrote in a statement, adding that the impact of tariffs could amount to more than $100 million in additional costs.

Latulippe said there’s no easy way for many local companies to quickly pivot to other markets, adding that the region could lose thousands of jobs if the tariffs aren’t reduced or removed. She said some products would need to be redeveloped for European markets, while steel is costly to transport long distances.

She said government aid might help companies survive in the short term, but that a loan program — such as the one Quebec announced Tuesday — won’t reduce the cost of raw materials or bring contracts back. She said it’s also possible that business confidence has been permanently damaged.

“I think we’re at a breaking point and everything won’t go back to the way it was before,” she said. “But if the tariffs are reduced or disappear, we will probably return to a level that can maybe look like the beginning of the 2010s, (or) 2015.”

Dutil said the coming months will be rough for the region, but he is confident Beauce will recover.

“Some people will get hurt, some businesses won’t make it through, but the area and the population in the region will rebound, there’s no doubt,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean it won’t be painful.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 5, 2025.

Morgan Lowrie, The Canadian Press