2026 Canadian Trade & Customs Outlook: Trade Remedies

As 2026 brings new compliance challenges and opportunities, Baker McKenzie’s Canadian international trade team is here to help you stay ahead. We are launching our annual series of insights that unpack 2025’s biggest developments and spotlight the trade issues set to define 2026, bringing the clarity needed to navigate the evolving trade landscape.

This article focuses on Canada’s trade remedies regime.

The CBSA has continued to bolster its trade remedy enforcement by introducing procedural changes and administering what may be a record breaking year of AD/CVD investigations and administrative reviews through its new portal, ACE (not to be confused with the US Customs and Border Protection’s ACE). At the end of 2024, the CBSA shifted toward more discretionary annual administrative reviews as the default mechanism for updating normal values, export prices and amounts for subsidy for goods subject to Special Import Measures Act (SIMA) measures. Closely following this shift, the SIMA Registry stopped issuing the SIMA Handbook, historically a publicly accessible document, citing dissemination compromising the CBSA’s trade enforcement. This about-face has left importers and exporters in the dark on the precise operation of the CBSA’s new tiered administrative review process. 2026 promises to bring another year of enforcement efforts as the 2025 Federal Budget committed funding of CAD 617.7 million over five years to improve enforcement efforts, including those related to trade remedies and Canadian International Trade Tribunal (CITT) findings that the sectors of Canada’s steel industry remain vulnerable to diverted low-cost steel exports due to the US section 232 tariffs.

Exporters and importers should prepare for the remainder of 2026 by:

• Assessing how these procedural changes and investigations may impact their supply chains and whether risk mitigation measures are necessary to implement in 2026 (e.g. seeking information on exporter normal values prior to import, accruing for potential retroactive SIMA assessments, sourcing new suppliers for subject goods from non-subject countries);
• Considering the heightened enforcement environment as the federal government seeks to protect Canadian steel producers through enhanced enforcement of existing AD/CVD measures and novel surtaxes;
• Reviewing pending expiry reviews to plan future participation;
• Watching the expansion of Canada’s trade remedies measures as the types of subject goods continue to expand to non-steel goods such as Thermoformed Molded Fibre Tableware and Thermal Paper Rolls; and
• Considering the risk of re-initiation of past investigations that were previously unsuccessful, and the initiation of follow-on investigations, expanding the subject countries of current measures applicable to subject goods.

Administrative Reviews

At the end of 2024, the CBSA shifted its trade remedies regime toward conducting annual administrative reviews as the default mechanism for updating normal values, export prices, and amounts of subsidy. Should importers seek a re-determination regarding imports supplied by a single exporter, the CBSA will initiate an administrative review, providing broad scope and flexibility to the reviewing officer. After seven years of implementation, the final normal value review was concluded in January 2025.

Similar to the normal value and re-investigation processes, the CBSA will accept written representations from interested parties –  domestic producers, exporters, importers, unions, and trade associations—regarding the need to update SIMA values. Written representations must identify the applicable measure and provide supporting evidence of the reasons for the review (e.g. fluctuations in price, costs, import volumes, provision of subsidies, changes impacting ministerial specifications) may prompt an administrative review.

In 2025, the CBSA conducted 11 administrative reviews, some in the normal course as part of the CBSA’s enforcement of the SIMA, and some by way of request for re-determination. Of note in the ongoing CSWP 3 review, is the CBSA’s consideration of whether a particular market situation (PMS) exists in the Turkish carbon steel welded pipe sector in relation to each exporter. This review is set to conclude in March 2026.   The CBSA has previously found a PMS in relation to Turkish rebar and heavy plate; however, did not find a PMS when examining a particular Turkish exporter in the corrosion-resistant steel sheet administrative review that concluded in July 2025.

In the review of the stainless steel sinks measures, the CBSA made a section 20 finding and derived normal values by way of ministerial specification based on facts available, despite not making a section 20 determination in its initial investigation. The CBSA has made several previous s. 20 determinations in other investigations, and most recently in respect of Thermal Paper Rolls originating in or exported from China. Even with counsel advocating for cooperative exporter-specific amounts of subsidy, the CBSA issued a single subsidy amount by ministerial specification due to the Government of China’s failure to respond to an RFI.

Investigations & enforcement

In 2025, the CBSA initiated nine AD/CVD investigations, seven of which focused on new products not previously subject to AD/CVD measures. In the first week of 2026, the CBSA initiated an investigation on Forged Grinding Media from China, including a section 20 investigation. In initiating the investigation, the CBSA found that imports of subject goods increased 740% from 2022 to September 2025, capturing an additional 30% of the Canadian market. In the first week of February 2026, the CBSA initiated its sixth investigation into Oil and Gas Well Casing (OGWC) exported from or originating in Austria.

The domestic industry and respondents must now grapple with the new Canadian steel landscape shaped by Canadian protectionist measures in the form of TRQs and surtaxes on steel and derivative products. While some CBSA/CITT decisions have proved favourable for the domestic industry seeking protections, others have not. In its statement of reasons for initiating the investigation, the CBSA addresses Canada’s steel measures, reviewing a July 2025 CITT decision in Steel Strapping (issued prior to the implementation of TRQs) which found that US section 232 steel tariffs create a reasonable indication of threat of injury due to diversion risks. However, in this case, OGWC from Austria is now subject to Canada’s steel TRQ regime and based on the existing import data, the CBSA found that an increase in volume of subject goods was unlikely, due to the protections afforded by the TRQ regime.

The OCTG 5 investigation and the OGWC 6 investigation illustrates the typical subject country scope creep that occurs when trade remedy measures enter into force: imports shift from the subject country to producers in other subject countries. However, in OCTG 5 exporters in South Korea, Turkey and the United States were specifically targeted, including an affiliate of a Canadian OCTG manufacturer, who later filed an application for judicial review challenging the initiation of the investigation. The Court struck the application for judicial review finding that the President of the CBSA’s initiation is not amenable to judicial review because it does not affect any legal rights, privileges, or interests.

In a rare move, the CBSA re-investigated PET Resin, reducing the scope of the subject countries to China and Pakistan from the 2017 investigation, which also covered India and Oman. In the previous investigation, the CITT made a no injury finding. Eight years later, the same investigation was underway, illustrating that market risk still exists for foreign exporters in the years following a no-injury finding. The complainants pointed to the growing volume of imports that resulted in declining Canadian domestic sales from 2021 to 2023, showing the shifts in the market from the unsuccessful 2017 investigation. The CITT also found price undercutting and price depression, which caused declining sales, market share, production level and capacity utilization rate, and poor financial results.

In a surprise determination, the CITT terminated the anti-dumping and subsidy investigation targeting US origin/exports of renewal diesel during its preliminary injury inquiry. Terminating an investigation at this early stage is rare and typically occurs during the CBSA’s dumping investigation where imports are negligible for purposes of the SIMA (e.g. HP 2020 IN). The CITT held that the complainant, one of two producers of like goods in Canada, did not represent a “major proportion” of the domestic industry and there was no evidence of alleged injury to other producer. Accordingly, the CITT could not make a finding of a reasonable indication of injury to the domestic industry, terminating the investigation. 

In Thermal Paper Rolls, the CBSA made it latest section 20 finding in respect of a Chinese export. Instead of investigating the thermal paper industry specifically, the CBSA broadened its section 20 inquiry to the Chinese papermaking sector (i.e. the production and sale of paper and paperboard products). The complainants alleged that the domestic prices of the subject goods in China were not reliable for determining normal values. The CBSA held that the presence of state ownership and participation in major producers, use of policy instruments and financial support supporting the conditions to make a section 20 finding. In early January, the CITT made a positive injury finding. 

Finally, in 2025, the CBSA issued a final determination in its first anti-circumvention proceeding concerning imports of container chassis from Vietnam, finding that these imports are not circumventing the existing measures in force.

Judicial reviews

Two applications for judicial review were determined before the Federal Court and Federal Court of Appeal in 2025 and early 2026. The Courts affirmed the position that applications for judicial review of CBSA decisions in an AD/CVD proceeding, prior to the conclusion of an injury investigation are premature and that challenges to normal values issued pursuant to an administrative review are subject to the redetermination and appeal provisions under section 57 to 62 of the SIMA. In other words, applicants must follow the “orderly and escalating series of reviews of determinations that culminate in an appeal to the Canadian International Trade Tribunal and, later, an appeal to this Court on a question of law.”

The Courts’ findings are based on the premise that the CBSA decisions challenged in these judicial reviews are not reviewable administrative decisions. Applicants are instructed to follow the administrative review scheme available under the SIMA, until the legislated remedies are exhausted (i.e. SIMA, s. 96.1). While determined on different facts, these decisions add to a growing body of case law, which effectively foreclose judicial review of decisions made by the CBSA  in an administrative review of normal values or export prices, or an investigation (prior to a positive injury determination).    

Annex 1: 2025/2026 AD/CVD investigations