Businesses in rural P.E.I. adapting, seeking new markets amid global tariff turmoil

Thinh Nguyen · CBC News

· Posted: May 18, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 3 hours ago

Several agrarian concern owners successful Prince Edward Island are feeling the unit of an uncertain planetary commercialized environment, overmuch of it sparked by U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs, but galore accidental they volition beryllium capable to accommodate and find opportunities.

That was 1 of the cardinal takeaways from an lawsuit held Wednesday successful Vernon River, organized by the Community Business Development Corporation.

The lawsuit brought unneurotic entrepreneurs and radical from assorted industries connected P.E.I. to link and stock strategies amid the ever-changing commercialized landscape.

Evan Nobles is co-owner of Belfast Mini Mills, which manufactures textile machines and exports them astir the world. 

He estimates astir fractional of the company's income are to the United States, and customers southbound of the borderline were disquieted that Belfast Mini Mills would propulsion retired of that market entirely. 

"It was a large hiccup astatine the beginning. As soon arsenic we heard the tariffs, everyone started to propulsion back. Just the menace of the tariffs made it hard to get supplies in," Nobles told CBC News.

"To suffer it wholly would beryllium tough, but we would pivot, and we wouldn't permission them hanging."

Open to caller markets

Nobles said the tariff news has led to immoderate maturation opportunities, particularly wrong Canada and overseas.

"Canadians were reaching retired to america more. Everyone wants to enactment local… So that helped," helium said.

"There has been a batch much successful the United Kingdom looking to permission the U.S. and enactment much Canadians, truthful we're the archetypal ones they look astatine for textile machines astatine this size."

He said expanding into caller markets is simply a dilatory and strategical process, peculiarly for specified a niche business.

To turn their lawsuit basal and diversify, the institution has advertised on societal media and reached retired to income reps overseas to link with imaginable buyers.

The propulsion to find caller markets is simply a inclination galore owners discussed astatine the event, said Claus Schmidt, enforcement manager of CBDC Central P.E.I.

"Of course, it's not an overnight process. We tin archer everybody's present saying, 'OK, you cognize what? We got to diversify,'" Schmidt said. "We cognize the adjacent 4 years are going to astir apt support looking similar this, and possibly longer." 

Schmidt added that though the commercialized scenery remains uncertain, Island businesses person shown resilience successful the look of different challenges implicit the past fewer years, from the pandemic and potato wart situation to post-tropical storms.

'We're inactive hustling'

The ongoing commercialized uncertainty tin besides person impacts connected the nutrient and manufacturing sectors.

Maureen Hanley, co-owner of Navigate Food Safety Solutions successful Montague, works with nutrient manufacturers successful Canada and crossed the globe to assistance them conscionable regulatory standards and amended information practices.

In the nutrient and beverage assemblage wherever nett margins are already tight, immoderate disruption similar Trump's commercialized warfare and reduced entree to U.S. markets tin beryllium particularly tough.

"There's not a batch of borderline successful there," Hanley said. "They tally thin already, and they're being impacted connected aggregate levels by galore things, and truthful the other reduced marketplace successful the U.S., that's a pugnacious hit."

Still, she said she hasn't heard overmuch manufacture interest implicit tariffs lately, adjacent astatine large commercialized shows.

"I went to a commercialized amusement successful Florida successful March. Big, large commercialized show. Nobody was truly talking astir it," she said.

"That's my world. The amusement indispensable spell on. They're inactive hustling. We're inactive hustling."