Buy Canadian has caused pain in parts of the U.S., but America will be just fine

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There were the star-spangled boos, the shelves emptied of California pinot noir and Kentucky bourbon. There were the cancelled trips and the conferences relocated closer to home. There were counter-tariffs and government promises to find new markets. And there were decisions at the grocery store about which ketchup to buy and which dog food to leave on the shelf.

For more than a year now, Canadians − at least, some of them − have fulminated against their closest international neighbour, eschewing U.S. goods and avoiding American vacation destinations.

But what has it all amounted to? In the end, did any of it make a quantifiable difference? Was any of it enough for Americans even to notice?

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Statistics collected by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis suggest the answer is yes − although any Canadian effort to steer away from U.S. suppliers is counterbalanced, and may even be outweighed, by a raft of other factors.

Nonetheless, Canadian spending on U.S. goods and services fell last year by tens of billions of dollars. The figures show that, on average, between 2015 and 2024, Canadians bought up 17.8 per cent of U.S. goods exports and 7.7 per cent of its exported services. Last year, both figures declined, to 15.3 per cent and 7.3 per cent.

The difference, relative to the longer-term average, amounts to nearly US$60-billion.

But Canada’s share of U.S. goods exports has been in a period of relative decline − and, even in less fractious times, annual numbers move inconsistently. Those changes are also set against the colossus of American trade: In aggregate, the U.S. exported $3.4-trillion worth of goods and services last year. And some goods that would otherwise have gone to Canada have instead found other markets.

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Still, the aggregate numbers offer a window into the scale of Canadian spending that is no longer being directed south of the border, a shift whose impact has become tangible not merely in the decline of cross-border visits but in spending − and jobs.

“It’s not the same as Iran saying, ‘We’re going to close the Strait of Hormuz.’ That’s a much bigger shock,” said André Kurmann, a professor of economics at Drexel University in Philadelphia. But “to the extent possible, Canada has retaliated a little bit economically, without any government policy of sorts.”

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Using data from cellphone pings and a U.S. payroll provider, Prof. Kurmann and other researchers were able to calculate employment declines at small and medium-sized businesses in parts of the country that, in normal times, have the highest numbers of Canadian visitors. They calculated somewhere between 13,900 and 42,100 job losses.

And that figure does not include the effect on larger businesses such as hotels, which have almost certainly seen additional cuts.

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“For these areas, our estimates suggest that there’s sizable job losses,” Prof. Kurmann said.

Further evidence comes from payment data. Payment processor Square said late last year that spending by Canadian cardholders across the U.S. had fallen 22 per cent. In border states, the change is more acute: Credit card data tracked by the state of Vermont showed a 47-per-cent drop in Canadian spending last year.

“Canada and Canadians − we can push back to a bully and we can inflict some pain,” said Stephen Tapp, chief economist at the Centre for the Study of Living Standards, a non-profit research group. “We can make it difficult for them. We can make it noticeable.”

Apart from the plunge in Canadian consumption of U.S. alcohol − which remains cleared from shelves in several provinces − two of the most significant changes have come in the form of cars and steel products.

Canada imported 94,148 fewer American-made cars last year, a 12-per-cent decline, as international automakers with plants in the U.S. reconfigured supply lines to avoid Ottawa’s counter-tariffs. Most of those cars were replaced by models made in Mexico, South Korea and Germany.

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“U.S. tariffs are costing automakers billions of dollars and weakening the North American auto industry,” said Brian Kingston, president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association.

U.S. steel exports to Canada, meanwhile, dropped by a fifth, a trade diminished both by short-lived Canadian counter-tariffs and U.S. steel prices lifted by American tariffs. It is now considerably more lucrative for U.S. steelmakers to sell at home.

“That reduced a lot of exports from the U.S. to Canada,” said François Desmarais, vice-president of trade and industry affairs for the Canadian Steel Producers Association.

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Indeed, the relative fortunes of steelmakers on opposite sides of the border highlights a broader truth: In some ways, the fall in Canadian acquisition of U.S. goods is a sign not of Canadian strength but of weakness.

The U.S. also bought fewer goods and services from Canada. Compared to the average from 2015 to 2024, the drop in 2025 amounts to US$55-billion.

And a “one-dollar drop in U.S. imports from Canada − that’s a lot bigger for Canada than the same drop in Canadian imports from the U.S. is for the U.S.,” said Joseph Steinberg, a professor of economics at the University of Toronto.

Overall, “whatever actions we’ve taken, whether they’re explicit retaliatory tariffs − which we mostly backed off on pretty quickly − or just buy-Canadian momentum, I would say that there’s not really any clear evidence that that has amounted to much.”

Worse, Mexico “has fared a lot better,” he said. Mexican trade with the U.S. actually rose last year.

For Canada, meanwhile, the geography of dependency remains unchanged.

“It’s still true that the closest large metropolitan area to Winnipeg is Minneapolis. For Vancouver, it’s Seattle. It’s not even clear that the reason we have so much trade with the United States in the first place was really a political choice at any point,” said Torsten Søchting Jaccard, an economist who specializes in international trade at the University of British Columbia.

That also means “it’s not clear that a political decision could reverse it all that much.” Diversifying trade is laudable, he said. But “it’s almost impossible to envision a world” in which the U.S. is not Canada’s top trading partner.

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Only 12 per cent of Canadian businesses intended to actively seek alternative suppliers outside the U.S. this year, Statistics Canada research from late 2025 found. Fewer than 15 per cent expected to increase domestic sourcing.

“Business is between people. So as long as the relationships and the business terms and conditions are reasonable, companies will continue to do business with each other on both sides of the border,” said Andrew DiCapua, principal economist at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

Overall, Canadians are not giving the U.S. a cold shoulder “en masse,” Mr. DiCapua said.

“But there are some interesting pockets.”

One is at the grocery store. Across Loblaws locations, purchases of U.S. goods have not recovered. Instead, they have settled “at a new normal [lower] but only modestly so,” said Scott Bonikowsky, Loblaws senior vice-president for corporate affairs and communication.

Border states, too, have shown no sign that Canadians are once again warming to the U.S. In Vermont, the credit card tracking data shows that the opposite is true.

“The fact that it’s declining even more is not great news,” said Maureen McCracken, the director of marketing strategy and research at the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing. Local businesses have offered “border buddy discounts,” some taking the loonie at par. But such gestures only go so far.

“Nobody thinks that fixes our geopolitical issues,” Ms. McCracken said.