Tariffs and tensions

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, April 23rd.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

ANGUS: We are true. We are north. We are strong, and we are free. And we are elbows-up, right now. All the time. Elbows-up, elbows-up, elbows-up. Thank you.

Canadian member of parliament Charlie Angus, leading a chant of defiance against the United States. Ever since President Trump took office, relations between the U.S. and Canada have fallen to historic lows. First came the remarks about making Canada the 51st state. Then came the tariffs.

MAST: The White House has imposed tariffs on steel, aluminum, and other goods—measures many Canadians see as directly hostile. Some are boycotting U.S. products and travel, leaning into that slogan: “Elbows up.”

EICHER: A recent poll found that more than a quarter of Canadians now view the U.S. as an “enemy.” And that diplomatic chill is coolest in the towns straddling the border. WORLD’s Grace Snell paid a visit to a few of those communities—and found that the damage is more than economic.

GRACE SNELL: Five hundred miles north of Washington, D.C, the St. Lawrence River is the quiet boundary line between the United States and its only northern neighbor.

Here, in Clayton, New York, the river’s also the main artery bringing vital tourist dollars to the local economy. Every spring and summer, crowds flock here for the boating, fishing, and scenery.

Just off the waterway sits the Golden Cleat—a tidy jewelry boutique stocked with local souvenirs. Kim Sola is store manager.

KIM SOLA: There is definite concern about how the Trump tariffs will impact the business.

Sola says people here in Clayton rely on their Canadian customers. But this year, many of them just aren’t coming.

SOLA: And we are definitely already seeing a disproportionate amount of traffic reduction from last year…

One reason is the low purchasing power of the Canadian dollar—which only equals about seventy cents in the U.S. But it also has a lot to do with recent trade disputes, as U.S. President Donald Trump deploys tariffs against Canada and other countries.

Already, government data shows a 30% dropoff in Canadians road tripping to the United States this March.

Across the border in the province of Ontario, a large Canadian flag catches the breeze. The distinctive maple leaf banner also flies from several homes and porches along the roadside—as if in polite, Canadian protest to Trump’s offers to make it the 51st U.S. state.

At a gas station in Mallorytown, attendant Catherine Leaker says she’s never had any trouble with her American customers. But she isn’t at all happy about the current state of affairs.

CATHERINE LEAKER: You have to be able to work together if you want to stay allies in that, but he seems like he wants the world mad at him.

Leaker says lots of people she knows are boycotting American products right now:

LEAKER: …Soon as they see something that’s American. They put back. Don’t want it.

About an hour’s drive away in Cornwall, shopkeeper Martin Buser has started carrying a new item. Baseball caps with the slogan: “Canada is not for sale.” Buser says the tariff situation is “mind-boggling.”

MARTIN BUSER: We don’t really know where it’s all going. It’s kind of a day to day kind of thing. It’s changing all the time.

Most people walking down the street are just minding their own business. The vast majority don’t want to talk about tariffs. Some say they just haven’t felt any direct effects yet. Out of 20 people I approach, only six stop to chat.

But, among those who are willing to talk tariffs, there’s a definite consensus: They aren’t happy about the situation.

PASSERBY: The tariffs is an unusually weird game. I’m not sure if it’s designed for the ultra rich to be able to buy more stocks when the market goes down at cheap prices, or if it’s, I don’t know what he’s doing…

This woman—who declined to give her name—says current politics feel almost like reality TV.

PASSERBY: He’s running the government like he did The Apprentice. What can I say?

One man wearing Canadian flag mittens didn’t want his voice recorded. But he called Trump a “madman” and said the tariffs will create a lasting rift in U.S. - Canadian relations.

Twenty-two year-old Macey Cornish is on her way back from the local bakery. She says she couldn’t believe it when she started hearing about all the tariffs…

MACEY CORNISH: You don’t realize how much you rely on your neighbors, in that sense, until they’ve decided to cause basically a war, which makes no sense.

Cornish says she already preferred buying Canadian. Most passersby agree.

KOSTA: Ninety-nine percent of everything I buy is local. So like, I’m still gonna go to Tim’s, I’m still gonna go to Riley’s, I’m still gonna buy things from local farmers, because I’ve always been that way.

This man—who identifies himself as “Kosta”—supports Canadians voting with their dollars. But, he says that’s really just a drop in the bucket of trade between the two countries.

KOSTA: It’s the steel, it’s the aluminum, it’s the potash, it’s the uranium. These things have nothing to do with what we buy. That’s like comparing us recycling individually to the amount of garbage is dumped by the multinational companies into the environment.

In March, Ontario’s premier threatened to “shut off electricity” to U.S. border states like New York, Minnesota, and Michigan. His way of hitting back at the U.S.

KOSTA: I was all for turning off the power. But I just don’t know that the Canadian appetite, even from our leaders, is there. I think it’s a lot more barking and a lot less biting.

Still, Forbes estimates the U.S. could lose about 6 billion dollars in revenue if Canadian travel remains at its current low. And that could have big consequences for tourist towns on the border.

Back on the U. S. side of the border, U.S. Customs and Border Protection data already shows a 15% falloff in people crossing into New York state from eastern Ontario. And that’s exactly the scenario troubling shopkeepers like Kim Sola.

SOLA: Our area exists because of tourism. And if they don’t come, we’ll struggle to exist overall as a community.

And Sola says border town residents aren’t just worried about their bottom line.

SOLA: It isn’t just the tariffs, it isn’t just the financial, it’s the emotional relationship that the two countries shared that unfortunately has been fractured.

That’s something that likely won’t heal overnight regardless of what happens tradewise. And Sola says that could mean some difficult days ahead for border towns.

SOLA: If we don’t have tourists come and put those dollars in, we have to make our choices, and they’re gonna be hard choices.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Grace Snell in Clayton, New York, and Ontario, Canada.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.