Israel’s Ministry of Economy and Industry has already reopened its anti-dumping investigation into Canadian medical cannabis, just a week after a procedural defect forced the same case to close.
This time, according to local trade publication Cannabis Magazine, the Commissioner for Trade Levies Dani Tal, the official who has driven every stage of the cannabis case since it opened in January 2024, has ensured he can impose the levy without the need for sign-off by the finance minister.
Israel’s cannabis imports battle
In January 2024, five Israeli producers, including Evergreen Solomon Pharma, filed the original complaint.
At the time, Tal calculated ‘dumping margins’ for each individual Canadian exporter, a figure illustrating the apparent gap between what an exporter charges in Israel, and its ‘normal value’ in the domestic Canadian market.
According to his calculations, these dumping margins ranged from 63% up to 554%. To rectify this, in November of 2024 he recommended a 165% blanket levy on Canadian cannabis imports for four years. Economy Minister Nir Barkat then agreed to adopt that capped recommendation.
In April 2025, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich derailed momentum, blocking implementation citing insufficient time to review the decision and the risk to prices, competition and patients.
The government’s own legal adviser ruled against the levy too, and the case was administratively wound down by July 2025. Israeli growers challenged the block anyway at the Jerusalem District Court, which rejected their petition in December 2025.
Seemingly undeterred, Tal opened a fresh investigation on June 29, 2026.
A month later, the case collapsed on a technicality. Tal’s office had gone public with the investigation without first notifying Canada’s government, a step required under the WTO’s Anti-Dumping Agreement, the same procedural hurdle the original 2024 case had needed to clear.
The very next day, Trichom, led by chief executive Tony Levi, and Evergreen Solomon Pharma, represented by attorney Zev Weiss and Professor Arie Reich, filed a fresh complaint. Tal moved fast this time, notifying Canada’s government on August 2, and reopening the same investigation publicly on August 5.
READ MORE…
A route around the veto
This time, Tal isn’t relying on an advisory committee, economy minister, finance minister or Knesset committee to push his levy through. Buried in the process is a tool called a ‘provisional duty’, a bond or guarantee Tal can impose on his own authority once 60 days have passed since the investigation formally opened.
Tal has utilised the ‘provisional duty’ route before. In May 2025, Tal imposed a provisional duty of between 61% and 146% on Chinese aluminium profile imports while that investigation was still running.
Six weeks after imposing that duty, Tal cut the average rate to 37%, after Smotrich pressed Economy Minister Barkat to scrap it altogether, citing the cost to post-war reconstruction. The provisional duty doesn’t legally require Smotrich’s sign-off. Whether it’s politically insulated from him is a separate question, and the aluminium case suggests it isn’t.
Regardless, a preliminary decision on the cannabis levy is due 60 to 90 days after August 5, which means it would land in October or November – squarely inside the window of Israel’s general election.
A struggling domestic cultivation market
The complaint comes alongside the release of the latest import figures. Canadian cannabis imports into Israel rose from roughly 21.5 tonnes in 2024 to 30.5 tonnes in 2025, a 42% increase, with a 128% spike in the third quarter of 2025 alone against the same quarter in 2024. Eighteen Israeli cultivators, including Tikkun Olam, Bazalta Pharma, David & Goliath and Telcan, have ceased operations.
The financials tell a different story. The same import book grew from $50.1m to just $54.2m over the same period (around 8%) while volume rose 42%. That gap implies the average landed price per kilogram fell by close to a quarter in a single year.
This complaint goes further, alleging Canadian producers benefit from government subsidies, CA$5.39m for PBG Biopharma, roughly CA$793,000 for Organigram, roughly CA$323,000 for Tilray, and that related-party transactions through Cronos Group and Canntec distort reported pricing. None of this is adjudicated. It’s the complainants’ case against named public companies, not a finding.
The Cronos allegation isn’t new, and it doesn’t only come from the complainants. In an April 2025 interview, Tal himself told Cannabis Magazine that Cronos alone accounts for more than 75% of Canadian cannabis imports to Israel, calling it ‘the primary source of dumping.’
Named respondents have pushed back on the complaint’s logic, not just its figures. Opposing counsel points out that Trichom, the lead complainant, is by its own account the most profitable company in the sector, and argues some of the eighteen closures reflect regulatory violations rather than import competition.
The methodology questions aren’t new either, and they don’t split cleanly along one side of the dispute. When Tal’s office published its first recommendation in 2024, the Health Ministry’s own regulation chief, Ran Ridnik, warned the Ministry of Economy that the analysis contained ‘factual and methodological gaps’ and risked pushing trade through European intermediaries.
Global Affairs Canada raised comparable concerns at the time about how Israel compared retail, wholesale and bulk prices.
Since the original complaint, the Cannabis Council of Canada, whose president Paul McCarthy contested Israel’s methodology publicly through the 2024–25 fight, suspended active operations on June 22, 2026.
Named exporters and Canadian diplomats can still engage the process individually, but the co-ordinated industry voice that pushed back on the data last time is not currently operating.
The next fixed date is 60 days after August 5, when Tal’s office can legally impose a provisional duty for the first time in this saga; a preliminary decision, per Israeli law firm Gornitzky GNY, is due within 60 to 90 days of the reopening, landing inside the same window as the election.
