N.B. premier planned to spend first year on health care, education. Then tariffs hit.

FREDERICTON — Instead of focusing on health care, education and housing, New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt was forced in her first year in office to divert her attention to the effects of U.S. tariffs.

“It’s been a huge curveball that I still don’t think we’ve felt the full ramifications of. But those are coming,” Holt told reporters Monday at a news conference to mark her government’s one-year anniversary.

President Donald Trump has targeted the steel, aluminum, auto, and energy sectors with duties even though most Canadian goods are protected from tariffs under the North American free-trade deal. And Trump recently imposed a 10 per cent tariff on lumber that together with anti-dumping and countervailing duties of just over 35 per cent, bringing import taxes for Canadian softwood lumber entering the U.S. to more than 45 per cent.

The tariff on softwood lumber, Holt says, risks dropping the province’s GDP by 0.5 per cent and throwing more than 1,000 people out of work.

During the 2024 election campaign, Holt had planned to focus her first year on issues like health care and housing. But a month after her election win, Trump was elected south of the border.

Trump’s trade policies, she said, have “taken up a heck of a lot more of my time than I thought that I would be spending in my first year in government.”

The president’s threats to impose other tariffs have frozen investment and expansion plans in various sectors, Holt said. In response, Holt said her government has been working to build and deepen trade relationships with other countries in areas such as defence.

In August, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a $1.25-billion aid package to support the softwood lumber sector. Last week, Federal Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said in Fredericton that help is coming soon, adding that funding will be backstopped by the Business Development Bank of Canada.

The BDC said in a news release that the program will make it easier for the country’s softwood lumber businesses to access $700 million in new term loans or letters of credit through their primary financial institution.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 20, 2025.

The Canadian Press