Canadian businesses expect more uncertainty as US Supreme Court strikes down Trump’s tariffs

The US Supreme Court ruled Friday morning that President Donald Trump did not have the legal authority to institute most of the tariffs he levied on international products coming into the country.

That includes tariffs on Canadian products that shellshocked many Canadian companies over the past year .

While some Canadian businesses are breathing a bit easier, uncertainty is still in the air. “Should we brace for something similar?

Worse?

Or is this really good news?” Jean-Simon Fortin, Paperplane Therapeutics The tariff saga began in February 2025, but months of US policy pauses and changes brought continued economic uncertainty .

The direct and knock-on effects left Canadian businesses, particularly those with physical goods that cross the border, struggling to strategize and cope with rising costs.

Companies like Smart Nora and Ssense said the changes to US import policies were part of the reason they went insolvent.

The Supreme Court appears to have put an end to most of the current tariffs by ruling that Trump exceeded his authority by imposing them with a law that’s supposed to be reserved for a national emergency.

CBS News has pointed out that the Supreme Court’s ruling restricts the president’s ability to use the emergency powers law to set duties, but it doesn’t stop the president from imposing tariffs under different trade authorities.

Not long after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Trump said in a speech that “effective immediately” all tariffs would remain in place and that he planned to sign an executive order applying a global 10-percent tariff.

It’s not clear under what legal framework those tariffs would be imposed.

Even before Trump promised his new, 10-percent tariffs, Canadian business leaders told BetaKit that they didn’t believe the saga was over yet.

One victim of the tariff carousel was Paperplane Therapeutics, a Montréal-based medtech company whose software is part of devices sold to clients in the US.

CEO Jean-Simon Fortin told BetaKit last year that logistical challenges and additional costs from hiring an import-export agency hurt the company’s key metrics.

In a call following the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday, Fortin said the tariffs had created a complicated supply-chain “nightmare” for his company.

While Paperplane wasn’t as affected as those in the aluminum or auto industry (those tariffs remain in place), he added that he’s looking forward to the coming days. “I do see this as making our business a lot more simple, in terms of just managing the flow of our products across the border,” Fortin said. “Especially if we go back to what it was before, where it was easy for us to ship to US clients without having to worry about tariffs.” However, Fortin was not convinced that this was the end of the road.

He said he foresaw the possibility of the US administration replacing tariff policies with something similar, perhaps under a different law, returning his business to the “nightmare round” of figuring out what has extra taxes and what doesn’t. “I’m not sure that the administration will just fold and kind of go back to what the weight was; the stakes are too high,” Fortin said. “Should we brace for something similar?

Worse?