‘Impossible position’: Montreal bookstore expresses worry over looming retaliatory tariffs on books

A hardcover book at Librairie Pulp Books and Cafe in Montreal’s Verdun that typically costs $40 may jump in price to around $55 in the coming weeks.

That is, if Canada goes ahead with including books in retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. as of April 2.

The owners of the bookstore are sounding the alarm — in hopes to create change at the federal level, saying that the move will devastate them.

“It’s putting us at an impossible position,” said co-owner, Daphnee Anctil. “We won’t be able to continue operating for very long with tariffs.”

Anctil says the shop and café operates with small margins.

“We won’t be able to absorb that 25 per cent tariff, which means that we’ll have to pass that off to the consumer, which is very, very difficult to do, considering that we’re already competing with Amazon,” she added.

Co-owner Alex Nierenhausen says the tariffs will affect most of Pulp’s books.

“Even if you’re a Canadian author, publishing with a Canadian publishing house, chances are your book is either printed in the United States or warehoused in the United States, so those books will be subject for tariffs,” Nierenhausen said.

This will have a direct impact on people like James Resendez, a customer and book club organizer at Pulp.

“I’m definitely going to have to cut down on my book buying habits for sure,” Resendez said, worrying that the book club participants may not be able to keep up their hobby.

“I’m still going to be going to these indie bookstores and giving them my money because I want these institutions to stay in place, but yeah, there’s only so long that I can do that,” Resendez added.

The co-owners of the store are calling on the federal government to exempt books from the countermeasures list.

“Historically books have been exempt from these specific tariffs because they serve an educational purpose and are seen as an educational resource,” said Nierenhausen. “So we’re just really hopeful that the Canadian government will continue to uphold that and not have these go through.”

Canada’s Finance Department tells CityNews in a statement that there are currently no Canadian tariffs on books imported from the U.S.

“Books are part of the list of goods open for a comment period, from which the government will be drawing an additional $125 billion in import goods for subsequent countermeasures,” the statement reads.

The Department encourages Canadians to express their views on the tariff measures through an online form by April 2.

“The government also announced a remission process, which would provide relief from these tariffs, on a case-by-case basis, to address exceptional circumstances that, from a public policy perspective, are found to outweigh the primary rationale behind the application of the tariffs,” the statement continued.

Nierenhausen says the book industry has been lumped with the paper industry as a whole.

“Which will make an impact as a retaliatory tariff with the U.S. economy,” Nierenhausen said. “Books in Canada from independent bookstores are not going to make that much of an impact down there.”

“This is what happens in a tariff war: nobody wins, products are costly for Americans, products are more costly for Canadians,” said Jasmin Guénette, VP national affairs at the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB). “At the end of the day, the consumer will have to pay more for the products that they want.”

Guénette says the tariffs are having the biggest impact on the smallest businesses.

“As opposed to those larger companies who often will have more financial resources to weather the storm,” he said.

This means bookstores like Pulp may have to pivot and change their business model for now.

“You might see completely different books on the tables after April 2,” said Nierenhausen. “The silver lining is there might be way more Canadian authors that are up for grabs and on sale.”