Meet the frazzled customs brokers on the front lines of a trade war

Gloria Terhaar is in the trenches of the trade war.

The regulatory analyst for Pacific Customs Brokers Ltd. is immersed in the chaos of U.S. President Donald Trump’s ever-changing tariff policies, wading through a constant barrage of announcements to arrive at the nitty-gritty details of what her clients need to know when their goods reach the border.

The complexity of her work has grown tenfold within the past few months, and she’s not the only one.

Late nights, quadrupling call volumes and questions about the “essential character” of random products have become the norm for those in the customs-brokers business since Mr. Trump set his trade war into motion.

Brokers with decades of industry experience say that today’s volatile trade environment has transformed their role from what was once perceived as a paper-pusher into an essential partner for a growing number of businesses coming to them for advice at every turn.

Often, Ms. Terhaar’s days begin with her or her clients noticing a comment posted by Mr. Trump on his preferred method of communication: social media.

“I take a quick look at what that social-media post says and then I take a breath. It’s like, keep calm and carry on,” she said.

Next, she watches for an executive order that will detail implementation, and any additional guidance to come from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Simultaneously, she’s refreshing the Canadian Department of Finance’s website to see if it responds with a press release. Then, she awaits the release of the Canada Gazette, published by the federal government, which will include an order-in-council and the actual legal text she needs to move ahead with informing her clients.

In the past, lead times between these kinds of announcements and their actual implementation would be a month or more. Now, yesterday’s news is quickly becoming today’s reality, as new orders come in hot and fast – and at all hours of the day or night.

“There’s not a lot of prep time. So, it’s a lot of people just watching things happen really, really fast. We’re on our feet, we’re checking our phones at 10 p.m. at night to see what notifications there are,” Ms. Terhaar said.

The movement of goods across the U.S. border has grown increasingly complex since Mr. Trump’s tariffs – and those imposed by other countries in response – began to take effect. For some smaller carriers, the situation has escalated into such a large headache that their shipments to the United States have simply been put on hold.

For example, international shipping company DHL recently announced it was temporarily suspending business-to-consumer shipments valued at more than US$800, citing multiday delays owing to a deluge of formal customs clearances. Hongkong Post also said it’s halting all shipments bound for the U.S. because of “unreasonable” tariffs on postal items.

Other companies, such as supply chain management firm Kinaxis, are capitalizing on the chaos, launching a tariff simulation tool to help companies figure out how the new levies will affect their operations.

At Pacific Customs Brokers, demand for their services has skyrocketed. President and chief executive Greg Timm said he used to take requests from around 40 new clients a day. Now, he regularly receives up to 250 a day.

When a new client comes to him for help with a cross-border shipment, Mr. Timm said he will first sit them down with PCB’s client-services team for an in-depth interview to gather details essential to the customs process, such as their business number, corporate structure and product list.

This step also helps PCB determine which agencies the client’s shipment will interact with. For example, a shipment of oranges would involve the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in addition to normal customs.

Next, Mr. Timm said, if the client wants to move ahead with setting up an account, he will ask them to complete a power-of-attorney form, which allows PCB to act on the client’s behalf when dealing with regulatory agencies.

Then, invoice information, such as shipping details, is collected, and finally, tariff numbers for each product are confirmed.

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Depending on the product, this is where things can get murky for imports from the U.S. Because of the various tariffs Washington has placed on nearly every single country in the world, a table with screws from one country, wood from another and steel from yet another has become a lot more complex to process for those in the customs business.

Entries that used to take half an hour can now take around four to five hours for U.S. imports, Mr. Timm said. “It’s not the kind of thing that an importer can do off the side of their desk and just hope they can keep up with customs.”

This is where Ms. Terhaar often gets called in to act as a sort of tariff judge. For example, if a table has a wooden top and metal legs, she must spend time evaluating its essential character to make sure it’s assigned the correct tariff number.

Various methods can be used to do this, she said, such as considering how the table appears to a consumer, how it would be marketed, or which of its components hold the most value.

There are also resources that Ms. Terhaar said she looks to for precedence, such as rulings by the Canadian International Trade Tribunal. Tariff numbers have always been important, but their weight has certainly increased because of the dollar signs now attached to them, Ms. Terhaar said.

Mr. Timm said that walking through this process with existing clients who may have been shipping goods across the U.S.-Canada border for years prior to these changes has become one of the more difficult parts of his job.

“Oftentimes, they want to understand why it’s changed and that part is beyond our pay grade,” he said.

Tariffs aside, Ms. Terhaar said the past five years have been a “cumulative regulatory burden” for importers, with a series of consecutive changes. For example, last fall, Canada Border Services Agency finalized an overhaul of its duty and tax collection process, forcing PCB and its clients to learn the new system.

Amidst it all, the line between work and the rest of life has grown blurrier for Mr. Timm and Ms. Terhaar.

“I live this. I don’t have really hours of work,” Mr. Timm said.

Aside from working longer hours, he said PCB staff are constantly in training sessions to keep up with the current trade environment and learn new skills, such as de-escalating phone calls with frustrated clients.

“I don’t think there’s any industry in Canada that would be more affected by workflow than us,” he said.

Nothing about his work today runs the same way it did even four months ago, Mr. Timm said. And he doesn’t expect this to change any time soon.

“Tomorrow is another day. Who knows what’s going to happen?”