LANGLEY, B.C. – One of the traits Shelby Dennis values most in her horses is their ability to regulate their emotions.
It is something she is working hard at herself while staring down a potential 50 per cent U.S. tariff on some of her products.
“It makes me really angry, because it’s not even just impacting Canadian businesses. It’s making stuff harder for the American citizens, as well,” Dennis said. “I feel bad for them.”
Dennis is the owner of Milestone Equestrian, which sells horse equipment, apparel and digital training programs online. Between 70 to 80 per cent of her customers are American, making new tariffs a major threat to her business.
It’s a scenario she already watched play out last year during trade uncertainty.
“Last winter was terrible, through Black Friday and Christmas,” she told CTV News. “That’s my biggest selling period.”
Dennis says misinformation is as big an issue as the tariffs themselves.
“I got so many abusive, nasty messages from U.S. customers who didn’t understand why they had to pay the tariffs, because they were under the impression that I had to cover them,” she said.
She has spent nearly a decade building the online business, which began in 2017 and has since become a larger source of income than her horse-training work. Her biggest sellers are bridles, designed with the comfort of horses in mind.
But those offerings could be hit with a 50 per cent tariff if the latest U.S. measures take effect.
Dennis said the uncertainty is already affecting her decisions ahead of this year’s busiest sales period, in light of what happened in 2025.
“I would typically be restocking for Christmas and Black Friday right now,” she said. “I’m not going to, because it’s way too risky to … bring in a bunch of stock and not know how it’s going to sell.”
Dennis has considered moving some inventory into the United States so it could be shipped domestically to American customers, but said doing so would create its own problems. Her bridles require quality control, she said, and a U.S.-based drop-shipping company might not have the expertise to properly inspect the products.
For now, she is considering selling off existing inventory and shifting more of her business toward products that are less exposed to tariffs.
Canadian small businesses are ‘anxious’: CFIB
The uncertainty is being felt by small businesses across the country, according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB).
“In a word, (businesses are) anxious,” Ryan Mallough, CFIB vice-president of legislative affairs, told CTV News.
The CFIB claims to represent more than 103,000 small businesses across Canada, and many have already spent months trying to plan for a tariff that may or may not materialize.
“The reality is, right now, you’re staring down the barrel of 50 per cent tariffs if you export to the states across a multitude of products,” Mallough said.
That uncertainty makes planning particularly difficult, he said, adding the problem comes after years of economic uncertainty kicked off by the COVID-19 pandemic, with many small businesses not in a good position to absorb another shock.
“It has been an uncertain 18 months for a lot of business owners,” Mallough said. “It’s been a kind of uncertain six years. It’s been a lot of crises, one after another, not a lot of time in between.”
Mallough said reduced consumer demand has already been a major constraint for small businesses, delaying hiring, investment and expansion decisions. For some companies, he said, another major tariff could be the final blow.
“For some businesses that we have heard from, that might be at midnight tonight,” Mallough said. “This 50 per cent might be it, the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back.”
With files from CTV’s Kristen Yu
