Retaliatory Tariffs From Canada Sparking Energy Cost Crisis for American Homeowners
The Midwest and Northeast are bracing for higher power bills for nearly 2 million households and businesses reliant on Canadian electricity.
Power bills are set to increase across the Midwest and Northeast United States as Canadian officials enact a retaliatory 25 percent tariff on energy flowing to its southern neighbor.
Nearly 2 million homes and businesses that receive a significant amount of energy from Canadian generators will see a spike in their energy costs due to tariffs being imposed Monday by Ontario officials in response to tariffs brought by the Trump administration.
“Effective today, the Ontario government has applied a 25 percent surcharge on all electricity exports to the United States as part of the province’s initial suite of retaliatory measures to U.S. tariffs on Canada,” Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, announced in a statement. This surcharge will affect 1.5 million homes and businesses in Michigan, Minnesota, and New York, costing up to $400,000 every day the surcharge remains in place.
Mr. Ford told CBS News that the tariffs will stay in place until President Trump abandons his tariffs on Canada. Mr. Ford told CBS that he would cut power to America “with a smile on my face” if Mr. Trump attempted to “annihilate” his province, adding that the president could change his mind immediately, but he does not want to be unprepared.
“Once I touch a stove and I get burned once, I don’t touch that stove again,” Mr. Ford said. “He has to understand that he can’t attack our country economically and expect us to roll over.”
Among the states affected by the new energy tariff from Ontario are Minnesota, Michigan, North Dakota, multiple states across New England, and New York, where residents are already reeling from skyrocketing delivery fees from utility providers and a pending 12 percent increase slated by Con Edison for January 2026. The rate increases, coupled with the tariffs, could easily exacerbate affordability issues. On average, New Yorkers already pay higher electricity prices than most Americans.
“It’s caused a lot of anxiety,” the executive director for New York’s Public Utility Law Project, Laurie Wheelock, told Bloomberg News. “We’re all waiting to see what happens with the next cycle of bills.”
In 2023, New York imported from the provinces of Ontario and Quebec nearly 4.4 percent of its total electricity consumption, according to data from the New York Independent System Operator.
“If you’re going to increase the price of electricity, it’s going to increase the price that people see on their power bills,” the Alliance for Clean Energy New York’s executive director, Marguerite Wells, said to Bloomberg.
The electricity tariff is just the latest in a growing trade war between America and its neighbors to the north.
Last week, Canada’s outgoing prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said that while the Canadian government has been “actively engaged” in conversations with the Trump administration, it will impose a 25 percent tariff on American imports, totaling more than $20 billion.
“[Both sides are] actively engaged in ongoing conversations in trying to make sure these tariffs don’t overly harm,” he said, adding, “We will not be backing down from our response tariffs until such a time as the unjustified American tariffs on Canadian goods are lifted.”
Anyone remember what it's like without Canada's electric power ?
The Northeast Blackout of 1965 occurred on November 9, 1965, affecting parts of Ontario in Canada and Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont in the United States.
Over 30 million people were left without electricity for up to 13 hours, with the blackout starting at 5:16 p.m. Eastern Time and lasting until the early hours of the next morning.
The cause of the blackout was a faulty relay at the Sir Adam Beck Hydroelectric Power Station No. 2 in Queenston, Ontario, near Niagara Falls. This relay was set to trip if other protective equipment deeper within the Ontario Hydro system failed to operate properly, leading to a cascading failure throughout the interconnected power grid.
The blackout had significant impacts on daily life, trapping 800,000 riders in New York City's subways and causing widespread disruption to transportation, including trains and elevators. Despite the chaos, the response was largely cooperative, with people sharing resources and helping one another.
In the aftermath of the blackout, the Northeast Power Coordinating Council (NPCC) was formed to develop comprehensive international reliability standards for interconnected utilities, which became mandatory in Ontario and other connected jurisdictions in 2007.
The 1965 blackout remains a notable event in history, serving as a wake-up call for the vulnerabilities in the power grid and the importance of international collaboration in managing such large-scale failures.
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