“Buy Canadian,” they tell us, as trade tensions escalate between Canada and the United States. “Elbows up,” the pithy slogan advises again and again, in response to the latest daily affront from increasingly unbalanced U.S. President Donald Trump.
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“Buy Canadian,” they tell us, as trade tensions escalate between Canada and the United States. “Elbows up,” the pithy slogan advises again and again, in response to the latest daily affront from increasingly unbalanced U.S. President Donald Trump.
“Buy Canadian,” they tell us, as trade tensions escalate between Canada and the United States. “Elbows up,” the pithy slogan advises again and again, in response to the latest daily affront from increasingly unbalanced U.S. President Donald Trump.
And there’s no question Canadians from coast to coast to coast have bought into the patriotic mindset that politicians, from Prime Minister Mark Carney right on down to elected officials at the municipal level, have implored us to adopt.
“We were attacked,” is how Carney described the Aug. 21 unraveling of trade talks, after U.S. negotiators reportedly inserted last-minute demands the Canadian side viewed as both unreasonable and unacceptable. “You’re at war when you get attacked. We got attacked.”
Shoppers have been caught up in ‘Buy Canadian’ fervour since U.S. President Donald Trump announced tariffs on Canadian goods in 2025. It has only increased in intensity.
The breakdown led to the immediate imposition by Trump of steep new tariffs on $29 billion worth of Canadian goods headed to south-of-the-border markets. A targeted, dollar-for-dollar Canadian tariff response will take effect after the Labour Day weekend. In the meantime, Canadians are more motivated than ever to stand firm against Trump’s tyrannical tactics.
In a rhetorical and attitudinal sense, we are a country galvanized. But what’s a bit more tricky amid all the waved flags, defiant T-shirt slogans and metaphorically elevated elbows is the question of matching actions to words in a way that has actual, measurable impact.
What, exactly, does “buy Canadian” mean? How many of us are committed to actually doing it, and how do we know when our efforts to redirect our spending to homegrown goods and services (or non-American alternatives) are having the intended result?
Some of it is relatively easy. Many Canadians have opted to cease spending their tourism dollars south of the border, choosing instead to vacation across our vast nation or travel to destinations located anywhere but on American soil.
The choice not to buy or consume U.S. wines and spirits was (in most provinces) essentially made for us, as governments removed American products from liquor-store shelves in response to Trump’s first wave of ill-considered tariffs.
A quick glance at the news for the upcoming day.
As for other “buy Canadian” choices … as it turns out, it isn’t that easy to know. In the inevitable reaction to Trump’s bullying, insults, tariff impositions and patently juvenile threats to Canadian sovereignty (Lake America? Seriously?), businesses everywhere have scrambled to declare themselves “proudly Canadian,” even when the products on offer are genuinely anything but.
Source: Read the original article on www.winnipegfreepress.com
