US-Canada tariff flip-flops have Bitcoin miners on their toes

Bitcoin miners are adapting their business strategies as the continued trade war between the US and Canada makes energy prices and policies all the more uncertain.

US President Donald Trump threatened to double his tariffs on steel and aluminum from 25% to 50%, leading the government of the province of Ontario to walk back its own plan to increase the cost of power exports to the US.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford had promised to further increase the surcharge or even “shut off the electricity completely,” given further provocation. However, he appears to have softened his stance, at least for now. 

The trade war may have reached a lull, but some crypto firms are looking ahead at possible policy changes in order to protect their growth. 

Bitcoin miners expect changes in energy markets

Ben Ganon, the CEO of Canadian Bitcoin mining firm Bitfarms, told Bloomberg on March 11 that the recent energy price hikes, had they gone through, were unlikely to affect his firm’s business. 

Bitfarms’ operations are mostly in Quebec and British Columbia, both of which boast significant hydroelectric capacity in relation to the total provincial energy mix. Ontario, by comparison, is “not as robust of an energy market. And over the last several years, they’ve really taken a big push on cutting back on baseload capacity.”

But even though Bitfarms’ energy situation may look solid for the time being, Ganon said that the tariffs “have implications for what policy and regulatory frameworks are going to look like in the future.”

He said that his firm wants to see “greater access to electricity markets” as well as fewer regulations on setting up a new business or new power applications. 

Energy policy has been a contentious area of debate in Canadian politics, with critics accusing the Liberal government — now led by Prime Minister Mark Carney — of harming the Canadian economy with their strategies to lower emissions. 

Related: What Canada’s new Liberal PM Mark Carney means for crypto

Ganon said: “The opportunities that are present in the United States are also present in Canada. And I think that this will all resolve itself and end up in a much more deregulated and smooth and efficient market because for years it’s been tied up in regulatory red tape.”

How would a Bitcoin miner benefit from tariffs?

Tariffs on goods such as steel, aluminum, and other industrial products — intended to encourage domestic production in the US— also impact Bitcoin miners, with some effects being unexpectedly beneficial.

While Ganon noted that miners can’t control the Bitcoin price, they can control their electricity costs. “One of the ways that we can do that is we can look for pockets of energy that are underutilized, that used to power heavy industry, which has been outsourced to other countries over the last 20 or 30 years.”

According to Ganon, Bitfarms has operations in Pennsylvania — a “Rust Belt” state heavily affected by the outsourcing of American steel and metals industries. His firm’s assets could soon be in high demand if the US manufacturing industry were to come back from the dead.

Ganon said that Bitcoin miners have been investing heavily in energy infrastructure that “used to power aluminum smelters and steel refineries and all the stuff which was outsourced.”

“Now Bitcoin miners have these assets. And as the pendulum swings back to America, those assets are now in high demand.”

China tariffs squeeze Bitcoin mining hardware

Canadian miners like Bitfarms may be unconcerned for now, but Trump’s tariffs on China have already begun to squeeze American crypto miners, who import hardware from China-based firms like Bitmain.

According to Bloomberg, shipments of Bitcoin mining hardware from China to the US were experiencing significant delays as of February 2025. The delays reportedly were the result of the US blacklisting Bitmain’s AI affiliate Xiamen Sophgo Technologies. 

Heavy customs fees for inspections of Bitmain-affiliated hardware have cost US miners up to $500,000, according to Vishnu Mackenchery, director of global logistics and services at Compass Mining Inc. New tariffs could make new imports of next-gen miners to the US “completely cost-prohibitive,” according to Synteq Digital CEO Taras Kulyk.

China-based mining hardware producers like Bitmain could set up operations in other countries to avoid US sanctions. During Trump’s first term, when he imposed a 25% tax duty on a number of consumer electronic goods from China, many mining hardware producers moved to Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand to avoid tariffs.

Bitmain even announced it would launch a US production line in December 2024 to “provide faster response times and more efficient services to the North American customers.” Bloomberg noted that the firm did not provide the exact location of its US line. 

Related: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says US should bring BTC onshore

Trump’s economic policies continue to be a mixed bag for the crypto industry. Wild fluctuations in trade policy and last-minute reversals have made the market difficult to predict. Elsewhere, the European Union has promised to impose counter-tariffs on the US, further threatening asset valuations. 

Marcin Kazmierczak, co-founder and chief operating officer of blockchain oracle solution firm RedStone, told Cointelegraph this could see Bitcoin sink to $75,000, a level not seen since November 2024. 

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