Anger over President Donald Trump‘s tariffs and threats to turn Canada into America’s 51st state has prompted some Canadians to boycott U.S. products and avoid traveling to the country.
Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment.
Why It Matters
According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the United States exported $349.4 billion of goods to Canada in 2024, making Canada its largest export market.
Should the boycott of American products in the country gain significant momentum, it could harm U.S. producers economically and potentially prompt a reconsideration of the new administration’s aggressive approach toward its main trading partners.
While some experts told Newsweek that the economic impact is unclear or likely to be short-lived, others pointed to evidence of more widespread changes in consumer behavior and said that the boycott reflects a deeper shift in Canadians’ attitudes toward their southern neighbors since Trump’s inauguration last month.
Frank Gunn / Tierney L. Cross/The Canadian Press via AP / Getty Images
What To Know
In early February, Canadian regional and national officials, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, began calling for citizens to avoid U.S. products and “buy Canadian” in response to Trump’s decision to impose 25 percent tariffs on the country.
“Now is also the time to choose Canada,” Trudeau said upon announcing retaliatory trade measures against the U.S. “There are many ways for you to do your part: It might be checking the labels at supermarkets and picking Canadian-made products; It might mean opting for Canadian rye over Kentucky bourbon, or foregoing Florida orange juice altogether; It might mean changing your summer vacation plans to stay here in Canada.”
Canadians were quick to heed the prime minister’s advice, one grocery store owner telling CBS News a week later that customers were “completely boycotting the American-made products.”
According to a recent poll of 3,310 Canadians by the Angus Reid Institute between February 16 and 18, 85 percent said they were planning to replace or had already replaced U.S. products when shopping. Of this overwhelming majority, 48 percent said they were replacing as many products as they could find substitutes for, while 37 percent said they would replace products if they could find alternatives of a similar price and quality.
Petitions have been launched to increase the visibility of country-of-origin labels on products, along with barcode-scanning apps designed to help Canadians identify and avoid American-made goods.
Andrej Ivanov/AFP via Getty Images
In addition to changes in shopping habits, Canadians have also reportedly cut down on traveling south of the border. Wait times at points of entry have fallen, while total vehicle crossings have dropped significantly compared to the same period in 2024, according to official border data from the Whatcom Council of Governments.
Even before the boycott took off, preliminary data from Canada’s national statistical agency also found that the number of Canadians returning home from trips to the U.S. had declined for the first time in January since the COVID pandemic; however, the fall was only 0.9 percent.
There are already indications that this movement could take a significant toll on the U.S. economy.
Canada’s largest travel agency, Flight Centre, told Forbes that it had already seen a “surge of customers” canceling vacations to the U.S.
In early February, the U.S. Travel Association, a nonprofit representing the country’s travel sector, warned that even a 10 percent reduction in Canadians visiting the U.S. could result in $2.1 billion in lost spending alongside 14,000 job losses. The organization said that this would have the most significant impact on popular destination states such as Florida, California, Nevada, New York and Texas.
What People Are Saying
Lana Payne, the national president of Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union, told Newsweek: “There is palpable anger over the multiple tariff threats and threats against our very sovereignty with the repeated assertation that Canada should become the 51st state. Canadians are coming together and fighting back in ways they can, and the easiest way to do that is to support the buying of things made in Canada.”
Payne said that the shift toward alternative vacation spots and supporting Canadian producers has “staying power regardless of the outcome of the tariff dispute” but that the boycott of American products “will depend on the actions of the U.S. government.”
“If President Trump proceeds with tariffs, Canada will have no choice but to retaliate, and it is working people on both sides of the border who will pay the price,” she added.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Pau Pujolas, an associate professor at McMaster University’s Department of Economics, told Newsweek that it was currently “difficult to tell” what sort of impact the boycott could have and that this “may be more hypothetical than underway.”
However, Pujolas said that the situation was essentially unprecedented for Canada.
“In modern times, Canada never got the threat of U.S. expansionism or a U.S. tariff-thirsty president that wants to use tariffs for anything that crosses his mind,”
Michael McLarney, the president of HARDLINES, a newsletter focused on the Canadian home improvement retail industry, told Newsweek that the threat of tariffs from one of Canada’s historic allies constituted “a major breach of trust that will not heal quickly” and that Trump’s comments on making the country the 51st state “sting the Canadian psyche as much as tariffs would impact our pocketbooks.”
“All these actions constitute a huge wake-up call to Canadians to reassess their trade affiliations and not be so reliant on one partner,” he said.
McLarney suspects that the financial boost to domestic industry due to the U.S. boycott will be temporary but that many Canadian brands will benefit from the attitude shift. Regarding the potential impact on travel to the U.S., he added that “everyone I speak to here is canceling their vacations or changing their plans.”
Sylvain Charlebois, a professor of food distribution policy and the senior director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, said that market data pointed to a roughly 10 percent increase in sales for Canadian products in grocery stores over the past month—described by him as “significant, but not huge.”
“At this stage, there is no concrete evidence of significant financial strain on U.S. producers from the Canadian consumer response,” Charlebois added. “If the shift continues and grows, it could start to show up in export data, but as of now, the broader U.S. economy is resilient, and Canada’s population is barely 10 percent of America’s.”
What Happens Next
Trump recently confirmed that the 25 percent tariffs on Canada will take effect next week following a 30-day pause agreed at the start of February.
During a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron, Trump said that the administration was “on time with the tariffs” and that this was moving on “rapidly.”
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