Avoiding US goods and services – from tech to whisky to air travel – has forced many to find a new way of living
This week the US imposed 50% tariffs on US$20bn (£15bn) of Canadian goods, and Mark Carney, the country’s prime minister, has vowed to match them “dollar for dollar” after the collapse of trade talks between the two countries last weekend. Donald Trump retaliated on Thursday by ordering the federal government to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America.
Such actions have added fuel to a widespread boycott of US products and services by Canadians that began early last year in response to the president’s trade war and threats to annex his northern neighbour.
More than 3,500 people from across Canada shared with the Guardian via an online callout how they have made changes to their lives in response to the US administration’s political and economic stance. Many expressed deep anger and sadness, but remained resolute that this was now a new way of living.
MS Windows and MS Office is also “made in USA”.
As an American, I’m right there with you Canada. I’ve been giving your country all my tourism money for the past 2 years since the orange dipshit became president again. You deserve it more than this shitty country does.
It’s been an education.
On the positive side, I never realized how many products are actually manufactured in Canada. There’s a Canadian option for nearly everything I see at the supermarket. Toothpaste is an odd exception. Some items read “Made in Canada using domestic and imported ingredients”. They don’t specify beyond that where they were imported from, which is a bit annoying.
One thing that really pisses me off is canned soup. Apparently, Campbells went around at some point and bought up nearly all the independent canneries, replacing them with a few giant ones in the US. Even Habitant, which I had always thought of as a Canadian brand, is under the Campbells umbrella at this point. But Canada (specifically Quebec) is the primary aluminum producer for North America by a good margin, which means a 50% tariff ding for every can produced. This affects American and Canadian consumers alike. Canned soup is supposed to be affordable, dammit!
Well, it turns out there is one cannery left in my area: Sprague. They’re a bit of a boutique brand, so not necessarily cheaper, but at least they’re not tariff-inflated and they make a good product. Their soups generally don’t contain outrageous amounts of sodium like most of Campbells offerings, and all their cans have pull tops which is a nice touch. I’m giving them a lot of business now and hope they can expand to fill the void of Canadian producers.
Hate to tell you this, but canned soup is in steel cans with a plastic liner.
Nelson’s Naturals does toothpaste. Refillable, even. And they sell toothpaste tablets.
Refillable from what? It’s already in a packaging that is essentially a bag with a cap.
For me a major concern was American surveillance and law enforcement backdoors. A country with no concern for international law or human rights should not have that kind of supranational power. I’d feel safer with Chinese electronics in all honesty.
Here’s some alternatives I’ve been using:
-Routers: Mikrotik, Latvian company, mostly made in Eastern Europe
-Cloud Storage: Tresorit, owned by Swiss Post
-VPS: Ovhcloud, French company with its North American Datacenter in Canada
-Linux: Anything but Fedora which is owned by IBM. Using it contributes to their RnD for their Redhat corporate services and distros.
-DNS: Quad9. Switzerland based non profit. Don’t give Cloudflare your precious traffic data.
-Dropped every single US owned social media and subscription service.
Still working on migrating my email and search off Microsoft and Google. Going to drop Android and Steam at the first viable opportunity.
Credit Cards and Youtube are literally the only two that are unviable to switch from… for now.
A country with no concern for international law or human rights should not have that kind of supranational power. I’d feel safer with Chinese electronics in all honesty.
This describes both the Americans and the Chinese. But I guess you can pick the lesser threat based on your circumstances. The Chinese have been far more aggressive in my region so if I’m forces to choose, well the choice is clear.
I’d feel safer with Chinese electronics in all honesty.
Don’t let recency bias cloud over your judgement.
I am hoping to hear from a real Canadian if this a common thing among Canadians or is it just a handful of people?
It’s a common topic of conversation in the grocery store aisles and in the coffee shops.
Nobody is happy about how Trump’s America is trying to fick over our country.
Dude, the American imported oranges have been going moldy on the grocery store shelves since Biden left office.
People will go hungry before they buy fascist.
I don’t think the USA would be bitching and moaning about Canadian tourists no longer visiting their shithole or Canadians not buying their alcohol if it were just a handful of people taking part in the boycott.
Another Canadian here and I’ll tell ya, buying American ain’t what it used to be. It’s not just a boycott, it’s straight up reputational ruination.
Adding my Canadian voice to the pile: it’s very real and common. It’s common enough that our biggest grocery chain has updated their labelling to be much clearer on the source of products
Québécois who did his groceries earlier today, here - 100% agree. Without going back to check I can tell you I intentionally didn’t buy grapes (“product of the United States”) but i did buy iceberg lettuce (from Quebec, incidentally for 1$) and red bell peppers (product of Canada). I bought onions (from Canada) but no berries (they were all from the US). Bought some “CARBS” sourdough crackers, too, Companys right here in Quebec!!
The grocery stores near me have big signs with Canadian flags on, marking some shelves as all Canadian. They wouldn’t bother if they didn’t think it would help sales.
Canadian here. Everyone I know is trying to avoid American products when we can. My parents switched from orange juice to apple juice for breakfast. People buy produce from Mexico to avoid American, enough that supermarkets try harder at sourcing outside the US wherever possible.
It’s more than that for me. Many products I bring into Canada from Europe come into the country via a warehouse or subsidiary in the US before landing in Canada.
I’ve stopped importing their products even though they’re not American.
I want to source their products direct or work with them to build out distribution here in Canada.
We need to change the worldview that America is the centre piece. Their fascists and what we’re seeing is a symptom of what America really is. Boycott them.
Yeah, I’m annoyed at a lot of transformed food products saying “made in Canada from imported produce”. Basically American diarrhea spreaders. Ain’t buying food that will kill us.
I’ve successfully cut the use of nearly every American product or service since last year. Genuinely worth it and enriches your life. You just realize how enshitified everything is.
I don’t think the American public has understood how these are permanent lifestyle changes. Any trade agreement, getting alcohol back on the shelves, will make these people change that. Tourists are gone. People will not cross the border with the risk of being sent to concentration camps in chains over minor bullshit.
Tourists are gone. People will not cross the border with the risk of being sent to concentration camps in chains over minor bullshit.
Conceptually and culturally I agree that this should be happening, but for reasons I can’t understand, the numbers and data hardly show a drop.
Are you sure about that? Every metric I’ve seen show considerable reductions and returning growth is relatively minuscule.
A 25% drop is quite catastrophic for an entire sector like tourism.
https://fortune.com/article/how-are-canadians-snubbing-us-travel-tariffs-tourism/
There are select articles you can find like this, especially about Las Vegas specifically, but I find them to be unconvincing clickbait. The FIFA World Cup and the upcoming Olympics were and are projected to still be packed full of visitors. It’s very disheartening. It seems to me like most people still take the “yeah but it won’t happen to me” attitude toward the stupid fascist thugs.
