ARTICLE REPRINTED FROM BLOOMBERG BUSINESS WEEK

US Border Towns Are Being Ravaged by Canada’s Furious Boycott

Economically dependent on their northern neighbor, business owners in Washington state are laying off employees and shutting their doors.

By Thomas Seal

May 5, 2025 at 12:00 PM UTC

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Canada’s boycott of all things American has caused the US measurable pain. Airline bookings from Canada to its southern neighbor have dipped significantly from last year, and the Federal Reserve’s latest snapshot of the US economy noted widespread declines in Canadian spending.

But few places in the US are hurting more than the border towns of Washington state, where local economies are almost entirely dependent on the other side. “We do not survive without Canada. We just don’t,” Ali Hayton, owner of the main grocery store in Point Roberts, Washington, said at a roundtable meeting about the crisis on April 24.

Less than 20 miles south of Vancouver, Point Roberts is nestled at the bottom of a peninsula intersected by the 49th parallel, severing it from the rest of the contiguous US. Unless you have a boat or aircraft, the only way in or out is through Canada. Many of Point Roberts’ businesses are owned by dual US-Canadian citizens and cater almost exclusively to people traveling from Vancouver’s densely populated exurbs.

US Border Towns Survive on Canadian Business

Now Canadians are staying away, plunging the town into an economic depression. Hayton’s sales are down 30% from a year earlier, leading her to slash stock orders and lower her store’s exchange rate to entice foreigners back. She says she worries it won’t be enough to keep her 17 employees on the payroll, noting that 80% of her business comes from Canadians visiting in the summer months.

The border crossing in Point Roberts is the seventh-busiest between Canada and the US, according to Laurie Trautman of the Border Policy Research Institute.Photographer: Alana Paterson for Bloomberg Businessweek

Point Roberts has been a tranquil getaway for Canadians from the densely populated Vancouver exurbs.Photographer: Alana Paterson for Bloomberg Businessweek

When British Columbia residents can’t get something delivered to Canada, they can order goods to parcel pickup shops near the border, then drive over and collect them. While Point Roberts has fewer than 1,300 residents, it has several such services because it’s so close to Vancouver. Now one has already closed after its business plummeted 75% in March from the same period last year because of Canadians retaliating against President Donald Trump’s imperialist designs on their country.

The situation is worse than when the border was closed during Covid-19, many residents say, because this time there are no government loans, and locals are free to spend their dollars elsewhere. Tamra Hansen, a dual citizen originally from Kelowna, British Columbia, says the future of the two restaurants she runs in Point Roberts is in jeopardy.

Tamra Hansen, owner of the Saltwater Cafe and Pier Restaurant in Point Roberts, says her businesses are at risk of closing if Canadian tourism doesn’t rebound.Photographer: Alana Paterson for Bloomberg Businessweek

“It’s like a mining town,” she says. “And when the mine shuts down, what happens to that town?”

Another Point Roberts attraction, the Rubber Duck Museum, is relocating just over the border to the town of Tsawwassen. That’s because of the decline in tourism and because most of the rubber ducks sold in the gift shop come from China and would be subject to US tariffs that would have more than tripled their price, according to co-owner Neil King.

Fourteen miles east, Blaine, Washington, is home to the Peace Arch, a 67-foot structure with an iron gate that symbolically marks the third-busiest border crossing between the US and Canada. “Children of a common mother. Brethren dwelling together in unity. May these gates never be closed,” reads its inscription. The gate is open, but Canadian southbound traffic in the first two weeks of April was down 52% from a year earlier.

The Peace Arch in Blaine was dedicated in 1921 as a symbol of fraternity between Canada and the US. Since March, a group of locals from both sides have been meeting at the arch for what they call a “Peace, Love and Handshake” rally in opposition to Trump’​​​​​s tariffs.Photographer: Alana Paterson for Bloomberg Businessweek

That drop-off is sharper than declines at the commuter- and trade-heavy crossings connecting parts of Ontario to Michigan and New York. West Coast travel “tends to be much more discretionary,” Laurie Trautman, director of the Border Policy Research Institute, a think tank at Western Washington University, wrote in an email. “For that reason, our region is much more susceptible to ‘border shock’ like we saw during the Covid pandemic, and now with the tensions in Canada-US relations.”

As local businesses tank, Blaine Mayor Mary Lou Steward says the decline in sales tax revenue, which sustains the town’s budget, is putting some municipal staff at risk of furlough. One of the city councilors has already been laid off from their job at a parcel shop, she adds.

Irate and proud Canadians have boycotted the US in the wake of President Trump’s repeated assertions that their country should be a US state and threat to use “economic force” to make it happen as part of his campaign of global tariffs. A major auto manufacturing plant in Ontario cut jobs in early May, fueling anxieties about potential job losses across Canada.

Blaine Mayor Mary Lou Steward says her city may have to cut staff if sales tax revenue doesn’t recover.Photographer: Alana Paterson for Bloomberg Businessweek

British Columbia Premier David Eby has been vocal in encouraging Canadians to cancel US trips, buy Canadian and make their absence felt, to ensure “the Americans understand how pissed off we are,” he said at a press conference in March, where he announced proposed legislation that would give him the power to charge fees on trucks passing through Canada on their way to Alaska.

Other factors have exacerbated the effects of the boycott. In March, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney removed a consumer carbon tax after Washington state increased its own. That’s diminished any lingering incentive for Canadians to drive over for cheap gas and perhaps stop in some shops during the trip.

While consumer blackouts are affecting Washington’s border towns, Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on US goods are hurting more broadly, says Naomi Savin, a spokesperson for Senator Patty Murray. Washington has one of the most trade-dependent economies of any US state, with 40% of jobs tied to international commerce. As America’s top producer of apples, blueberries, hops, pears and sweet cherries, the state risks losing vital export markets in trade wars with partners such as Canada, Savin says.

Bill Becht, who owns Horseshoe Coins & Antiques in Blaine, is among the 39% of Washington voters who chose Trump. He says he thinks Trump’s threats to annex Canada are mere rhetoric, but that “you can feel” the loss of Canadian visitors.Photographer: Alana Paterson for Bloomberg Businessweek

Nick Kiniski, owner of Kiniski’s Reef in Point Roberts, says he’s had “not a lot of sleep”' as business has dropped off. The bar used to host hordes of Canadian customers on the weekends in the days of British Columbia’​​​​​​s restrictions on Sunday drinking.Photographer: Alana Paterson for Bloomberg Businessweek

Larry Musselwhite of Larry’s Liquor Locker says that 80% of visitors to Point Roberts are Canadians. “The casual vacationer is staying away from America,” he says.Photographer: Alana Paterson for Bloomberg Businessweek

The relatively few Canadians who’ve continued to venture south—some for the dairy available at Edaleen in Blaine or Tillamook products from Oregon—have been stung by Canada’s counter-tariffs. “I’ve had several customers come down and buy $200 worth of groceries, get up to the border and have a Canadian border guard say, ‘Oh, well, you just spent $200, you owe us $50,’” says Hayton, the supermarket owner, referring to the 25% duty on some US goods. “So they come back and want to return all their groceries.”

Some would-be visitors from Canada are also staying away after news stories about US border officials detaining travelers for minor reasons and searching personal devices in the wake of the Trump administration’s border crackdown.

Gurdeep “Zeal” Bains, a businessman who moved to Blaine six years ago after 15 years living in Surrey, British Columbia, says his family has been victim of the soured relationship. His daughter plays on a basketball team in Surrey, where his car’s Washington license plate has prompted locals to tell his family to go back to the US. “People should not be scared to drive on the roads in either country,” he says.

As a sign of goodwill, Brian Calder, whose family moved to the Point Roberts area in the 1890s, has created a bumper sticker—“Point Roberts, Wa. Supports Canada!”—of which he says he’s sold 300. In February, Calder wrote to Eby, the British Columbia premier, asking for an exemption from Canada’s retaliation. Campobello Island, off Canada’s east coast, has secured a special carve-out from those tariffs, because of its similarly stark dependence on the US. Calder never heard back from Eby, whose office didn’t respond to Bloomberg Businessweek’s request for comment.

Many residents of Point Roberts say they feel neglected by state and county leaders, who they say have failed to invest in their community over the years. Despite Trump’s talk of annexing Canada, some US locals would prefer the opposite. “There’s a lot of people that are saying, ‘Why don’t we just give Point Roberts to Canada?’” Hayton says. “I feel like most of the people in Point Roberts really just feel like we are alone in this.”

Southbound border crossings in Blaine have declined sharply from last year. Senator Patty Murray of Washington has said US-Canada tensions “are really having a long-term personal impact between people that we can’t have.”Photographer: Alana Paterson for Bloomberg Businessweek

I NOW DO NOT GET BUSINESS FROM CANADIANS