Canadian locknut provider J.Lanfranco Fastener Systems supplies premium fasteners to industries on both sides of the border. VP Jason Baines discusses his approach working with partners across the supply chain, shares thoughts on changing political conditions, and looks for the best in everyone involved. Run time: 22:55
—
Listen to the podcast here
Special Report: A Canadian Perspective On Tariffs With Jason Baines
It’s late March 2025, and there’s plenty of headlines in the Fastener industry, but the tariffs are still at the top. Lots of confusion still and many letters flying around up and down the supply chain. It’s been a challenge to get people to speak on the record, but I reached out to Jason Baines in Canada. He runs J.Lanfranco and this is a conversation that we had. He expresses some of his thoughts the way he’s looking at this as well as the political situation up there and how that may impact what we’ll see in the coming months. Nobody knows for sure, but it’s very helpful I think to get as many perspectives as you can.
As time goes on, as we see materially how this unfolds, more people will be speaking out. Also, as a point of reference. When news of the coming tariffs first started swirling around, we added a supplemental question to the fastener distributor index survey, and we released that report in December, in case you don’t recall at that time. All the participants of the survey, about 66% supported to one extent or another, implementation of tariffs. On the other side, 40% firmly did not support it. Now, that there are reality.
I’m not sure what to think. Maybe we need to revisit that question again on the FTI. One of the things I like about this conversation with Jason is his truly authentic view of how we should all be working together to make the best of this, because pretty much everybody involved is in a reactionary position. Most of us don’t have any influence over these events whatsoever. We’re making the best of it that we can. I hope you get something out of it.
The title sponsors of Fully Threaded Radio are Brighton Best International, Global Fasteners and Star Stainless. Fully threaded radio is also sponsored by Buckeye Fasteners, BTM Manufacturing, Eurolink Fastener Supply Service, Fastener Technology International, InxSQL Software, J.Lanfranco, Solution Industries, Volt Industrial Plastics, Würth Industry USA. Thanks so much for reading, folks. Here’s the conversation with Jason Baines of J.Lanfranco.
—
I’m back from the pack West and spoke to several of our Canadian friends. Jason Baines, you were not there. However, I know your heart is on the side of the border. There’s a lot going on, right?
There’s a ton going on. It’s an interesting time that we live in. This is going to be something that’s going to leave us all with a couple of scars, but we’ll come out of it with more knowledge and experience. It will make us better.
Canadian Sentiment Over US Tariffs
Overall, working with your vendor suppliers and so forth up there. What’s the sentiment? We get a sense, but it’s nice to hear it from somebody who’s up there.
The sentiment is evolving. A lot of people up here, Canadians in general, thought that we were going to find some common ground of which there is a lot. Canadians feel a connection to Americans. We work together. We vacation together and there’s a long history of military action together. People feel, at this point, very surprised and shocked. They were trying to make the changes up here. People recognized that some changes needed to be made and made improvements around the border. Everybody cares about Fentanyl.
As the tariffs came in when they were suspended initially, I think there was a sense of, “We’re going to figure this out.” Now that they’re being fully implemented, Canadians are digging their heels in and I’m on the fence. I understand people are frustrated. I’m frustrated too because this affects us and ultimately, affects our customers. We’ve done a lot to mitigate that. Unfortunately, people are getting caught up in these early days and you’re hearing a lot of elbows up, which is a hockey term. A lot of people are proud to say, “I’m not drinking Bourbon, or I’m not going to get orange juice. We’re going to show them.”
It’s a slippery slope to be on this and people don’t recognize or maybe understand just how deep this relationship is between the US and Canada. It’s starting to get a lot more tense. Canadians are proud people and they’re digging in. You’re seeing the stores say, “By Canadian-American products getting pulled.” I find this all unfortunate and I find it unfortunate the sentiment that’s starting to occur. We have to solve this quickly or there’s going to be a lingering sense of distrust. There’s a lot of things to discuss, but let’s discuss them.
The sentiment up here. People are starting to get worried. We’ve got a local steel wire mill, Ivaco. They’ve got layoffs happening. There’s going to start to be job losses. People are now getting very worried about job security and are getting frustrated. What I find the most unfortunate, to distill it down to one thing, is an erosion of this trust and belief in this deep-rooted relationship that we’ve had forever, but it’s getting tedious up here.
The tariffs are causing erosion of trust and belief in the deep-rooted relationship between the United States and Canada. Share on XPeople are feeling the crunch, and it’s certainly not a good vibe. That’s the roundabout way of saying. It’s not too nice here. People are getting their hackles up, but now that initial, “Let’s get our elbows up, dig in our heels and we’re going to show them,” is being replaced by real worry. That’s how I see it, but I’m in a community that is seeing job losses and also somebody that works tremendously. I’ve spent 25 years of my life working with the US, and I cherish that relationship. There’s a way forward. Let’s get these people sitting down and let’s go. That will happen when we’ve got a government with a mandate up here.
What’s Happening With Canada’s New Government
That segues us into my next topic area. There’s lots going on up in Canada with the onset of these tariffs. Meanwhile, you just replace your government. It’s hard to give a two-minute snapshot of that, Jason. I appreciate that. Does the new government or the possibility of forming one, represent any optimism in this for you?
It does in short. The quick note is that Canada has a parliamentary system. The fundamental difference between how we have a prime minister and the US has a president is that the governing party. Whoever is the leader of the elected party or the governing party, that is who the Prime Minister will be. Justin Trudeau resigned. Prior to resigning, he shut down our government or pro-rogued it because there’s another investigation he didn’t want to participate in. They were requesting documents, so you can pro-rogued parliament and hit the pause button. Parliament shuts down and nothing can happen.
In that time, they had a leadership race and they selected Mark Carney, who’s the ex-governor of Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, as their new leader. As the new leader, he automatically becomes the Prime Minister, even though he has not been elected to our House of Commons. It would be like your House of Representatives rolled in. He’s been the economic advisor to Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Government since 2020.
There’s a lot of similarities. He has a lot of the same core beliefs as Trudeau and the Liberals. In his past life, though, he was the head of Brookfield. He’s a business guy. He managed these large funds and Brookfield moved its headquarters from Toronto to New York. Trump says that he prefers to deal with him than our conservative candidate up here Poilievre. I think that what Poilievre wants to do is in line with what the US is doing, which is to have more domestic production of the things we’re good at like oil, gas, resources, extraction and such.
At the end of all of this, whether we have a conservative or liberal government up here, a government with a clear mandate is what’s going to then allow the US to have confidence to negotiate a deal. Until that happens, I don’t see there being a big rush to say we’re going to negotiate with the government that may not be in power in four weeks. That’s holding it up.
How long did you say you expect that to take for that to firm well?
At its earliest. They’re saying that if there was an announcement to say we’re going to have an election. If they were to announce that, probably late April would be the earliest that an election could be held. This comes into our parliamentary rules and whatnot. You need a minimum number of days and this needs to follow certain procedures, but people are guessing late April. My only misgiving is, I think like all governments that are in power, if the Liberals can manipulate the rules and they just use them within the boundaries of the laws.
If they can use them to push this out, they may well do it because of the sentiment, which hackles up. We can’t believe this is happening and we’re angry. They’re frustrated with Donald Trump. It’s helping the Liberals climb in the polls. They may want to try and push this a little longer to gain more support, but I think by late April. We’re hoping that there’ll be an election. As I say, whether you’re a fan of either party at this point, what’s important is that Canadians give a renewed mandate. Here’s the government. Here’s the government we voted for the next four years.
Now, they’ve got that mandated confidence to go and negotiate. Trump’s going to look at that and say, “Here’s the government I’m working with for the next four years.” We’re hoping that that happens. The funny thing is, Eric. Anything can happen before that, though, as we’ve seen. There’s maybe a much bigger strategy at play here that we don’t all understand or see. Maybe we wake up and some of this is resolved.
How J.Lanfranco Deals With Their American Customers
That’s exactly what a lot of people believe and are hoping and expecting to tell you the truth, Jason. I think you hit it on the head. Thanks for that analysis. It’s murky waters for sure, but I knew that you would have thoughts on it. What message do you have for your American customers? As a follow-on to that, are you still planning on being at Fastener Fair in Vegas?
For us, it’s business as usual. The one caveat to that is we took this talk of potential tariffs seriously. We have products out of Canada, the European Union, and France. What we’ve been doing is investing in developing Lanfranco, USA. We have a warehouse in New Jersey, and we’ve got a contract manufacturing there for some products that require US steel. What we started to do at the end of 2024 and right away in January, is we started moving a lot of inventory down there to ensure our customers wouldn’t be affected and I mean a lot of inventory.
We also looked at just diversifying some of our supply chains and having more domestic sources available. We got aggressive on whatever we could do, what’s in our control and looking at how we get aggressive. We expected that the Canadian dollar would take a hit. What can we do in terms of foreign exchange to shore things up? All of this was done with the goal of mitigating any impact of potential tariffs on our customers.
The message we’ve come out with is that we’re going to be pushing any of our customers in the US who work with our office here in Canada. All of our open orders and all of our future orders going forward are going to be treated out of Lanfranco, USA so that they’re not going to be faced with the uncertainty of a tariff bill. We’ve been so aggressive with front loading inventory, diversifying the supply chain, where we could.
The American market has been very good to me and our company and has been loyal. They’ve invested in us, and it’s time for us to invest in them. We’re taking on a good chunk of the tariff. We’re going to just be coming out with a very small tariff surcharge and we’ve limited it. We’re going to be probably around 8%, and that’s only going to be there while the tariffs are there. We’ve worked very hard to be aggressive and prepared. The message is, everybody is the same person they were before this started. This is a negotiation between governments. This is not a reflection of the relationships, the loyalty and the confidence that’s been established for me over the years.
It’s time to step up because this is temporary. I do believe we’re going to figure this out because we have figured out so many other things that are far more impactful than this. There’s been world wars, Afghanistan and Iraq. We’ve gone through natural disasters. When the fires happened in California, there were Canadian water bombers down there, even with the talk of tariffs. When your family and friends need help, you’re there. I believe this is temporary and we’re putting our money where our mouth is. We’re investing in our customers because we know that no one can shoulder this all on their own.
We look at it as we’ve built this business together, so let’s navigate this together and share the load. If this continues a year from now, it’s going to be a different story. We’ll have to reevaluate, but business as usual. I see this as an opportunity. This is an opportunity for good companies and good people to support their customers and vice versa and work together.
At the end of the day, what’s most important is a surety of supply and to make sure that the manufacturers who are using parts can continue to build stuff. I don’t agree with any politician 100% of the time but we got Doug Ford up here who I didn’t like him threatening to turn off the electricity but he said, “Let’s build an Am-Can fortress,” and that’s what’s going to happen at the end of this.
I got to stop you on the Am-Can comment there. Hans Fuller was walking around the Pac West with a name badge that said Ontario, Canada and next to it said, “51st?”
I don’t think we’re ever going to become the 51st state. It’s a joke. Most people up here, I would say it’s wearing thin. Nobody wants to hear that. I do think this is about strengthening what we have here. I look at it and it makes too much sense for us not to be finding a way to work together. We’ve got the most of everything. When we put all of our chips in the middle of the table together, we got it all. Variety is the spice of life. I would just caution everybody. There’s a great thing on TikTok. It’s got Trump there and in the background, it’s like 5 feet of snow. It’s French Canadian. It’s a Montrealer swearing in French non-stop. It says, “If you take all of Canada, you’ve got to take all of Quebec, too.”
Nobody wants that.
I say that in tongue and cheek because my hometown is Montreal but you got to take all of us. Let us deal with our stuff up here. I think we’re going to get through, but it’s critical now for everybody to take a step back and think about all the great stuff that’s happened. Up until now, all the great stuff that can happen afterwards and just how we get through this. We get through this by working together. For us, that means sharing in the cost of these tariffs, doing the things we’ve done to control it as much as possible, reducing the impact and communicating.
Every day, we’re talking to our customers and we’re being very flexible. The biggest challenge in all of this is dealing with the customs agents. The amount of questions and paperwork we’re getting asked for is intense. I bet you, if we got our politicians to go through the hoops of fire we are now. They’d say, “Let’s get this solved now.” Hopefully, what’s going to happen is the snow is going to melt, things are going to thaw and the sun’s going to come out. I’d say let’s get everyone together with a cold beer, but I know Trump doesn’t drink. Maybe it’s getting together with a Big Mac and Coca-Cola and figuring it out. Let’s get back to work.
J.Lanfranco At The Fastener Fair
That’s what people love about you, Jason. I have to say about Canadians in general, you’re generally good-hearted people and good-natured people. Thank you for being that way. I know you have to jump and so I just want to pin you down here. Is that to say J.Lanfranco will be at the Fastener Fair?
Canadians and Americans have so many shared values. We are trying to do the best we can to get through our hardest trials. Share on XWe’re going to be at all of the Fasteners shows. I sat down with my team and I said, “We’re not slowing down. It is business as usual. Full steam ahead.” There’s no change for us. I believe people need good quality parts. They want to work with good people and that’s it. I’ve spoken to everyone. People have been generous in sharing other points of views and information with me. Carmen Vertullo sent me a little thing, copper in the US and just information. That’s what it comes down to, communication.
Maybe that’s what our politicians can take a lesson from us, just keep talking and keep communicating. We will be at all of the Fasteners shows. We will be at all of our regular shows. The exciting thing for you is, we’ve got brand-new Lanfranco 50th anniversary hockey jerseys. We got those made up. They’re in a beautiful color with the laces on the front. It’s got a number 25 on the back and it says Canada on it. We’re making some US jerseys as well.
When I see you, I’ll have one for you and Brian and we’re going to raffle some of those off. We’re all in on this. We’re going to be there with new swag. Our hope is we up our swag game so we can give some competition to the U Bolt Coffee and just see if we cannot get a little bit more attention on us and away from the coffee guys.
Nothing a little good natured body slam can’t solve, Jason.
Eric, we are all in and we’re going to be there. We invite everyone to come out and see us. These things are so important for the industry. I think the future is bright. We’re in a corner now. You keep moving your feet. You keep churning and things are going to turn around. I’ve got confidence in both sides on this, because I do think that Canadians and Americans, at the end of the day, have so many shared values. We’re trying to do the best we can, but we will be very happy and relieved once this all gets worked out.
Jason Baines of J.Lanfranco. Thanks for being with us.
Important Links
![[GC2610] Solution_FCH Banner_[220x100] copy](https://news.fastenersclearinghouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/banner_solutionind.jpg)
