Tariff changes: updating prices across your website and sales channels

When a customs tariff changes, your price changes, and that price is displayed in more than ten places that never update together. The question is not what to change, but in what order, so that a gap between two displays doesn’t cost you a merchant account or a sale.

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What triggers the update

On June 24, 2026, the Federal Register published two U.S. Customs rules that indefinitely suspend the US $800 exemption: one for all modes of transport except mail, one for postal shipments, with a new postal entry process whose compliance date is October 22, 2026. As of October 6, 2026, that suspension stands: the Court of International Trade upheld it on August 13, 2026, and Congress has repealed the exemption as of July 1, 2027. That text says nothing about your website. It still moves a cost, and that cost ends up displayed somewhere.

You calculate the effect on margin, someone changes the price in the catalogue, and the matter is considered settled. The other places where that price lives keep the old amount for hours, sometimes for weeks.

Tariffs are not the only trigger. A carrier revising its rate grids or a currency sliding produces the same work. The American rule itself is covered in the end of the US exemption.

The ten display points of a single price

Here is the typical inventory of a merchant shipping outside Quebec. Build yours before talking about order.

The update order, and why it matters

The order is not a preference of method. Every step taken at the wrong moment opens a window during which two displays contradict each other. That window is what costs money.

You close what commits the company first, then fix what represents it. A gap at checkout produces an order sold at a loss, a stale price in a table produces a phone call.

What you prepare only once

A company facing its third tariff change in a year shouldn’t start from scratch. Four preparations turn a two-day project into a two-hour execution.

The first is the register. One line per display point, three columns: where it sits, who owns it, how long it takes to reflect a new price.

The second is the single source. As long as amounts are typed by hand, every change is paid for in hours of searching. Replace them with a reference back to the product record.

The third targets downloadable documents. A PDF price list circulates long after the date it was written. A pricing page gets corrected once and for all. Otherwise the document carries a validity date on its first line.

The fourth is the fee display rule. The temptation, when a tariff lands, is to add a surcharge at the end of the path. Google asks that additional fees be included in the base price or declared in the shipping cost, never as a separate line. The Competition Bureau states that drip pricing is a false or misleading representation under the Competition Act (sections 52(1.3) and 74.01(1.1)) since June 23, 2022. The Act allows an exception for fixed fees imposed by a government, such as sales taxes. In Quebec, the Consumer Protection Act (section 224 c) goes further: the price advertised to a consumer includes the total amount they will have to pay, and only GST and QST may be added. A surcharge you set yourself doesn’t qualify: the price you are allowed to display.

Before the next tariff change

Prices that move at the pace of a currency are covered in what multicurrency doesn’t settle, and grids specific to each customer in price visibility in B2B.

The effect of those amounts on abandonment is measured in the three frictions of a first international sale, and the option of going through an intermediary in marketplace or your own store.

Frequently asked questions about price updates