Ralph Fehr knows operating costs: payroll, machinery upgrades, a mortgage on the Morden plant.

The $4 million tariff bill is new. And as U.S. tariffs on Canadian kitchen cabinets are set to double Jan. 1 from the current 25 per cent, Fehr is bracing for a future he calls “pretty much insurmountable.”

“I don’t think that it’d be possible to have U.S. sales with 50 per cent tariffs,” Fehr said.

He co-founded Elias Woodwork & Manufacturing Ltd. with his brother four decades ago. It’s grown to two sites — in Winkler and Morden — and, at one point, counted 500 employees creating parts for kitchen cabinets.

Most of the cabinet doors and mouldings travel south to the United States. The goods land in chains across the country, Fehr said.

His company started eating recent tariff costs. Twenty-

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