{"id":317362,"date":"2025-12-01T00:04:31","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T00:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/317362\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T00:04:31","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T00:04:31","slug":"these-u-s-companies-moved-to-canada-will-there-be-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/317362\/","title":{"rendered":"These U.S. companies moved to Canada. Will there be others?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amid the economic uncertainty of the trade war between the United States and Canada are some silver linings. Companies are choosing to leave the U.S. for a new home north of the border, thanks to changes in trading policies, immigration practices and even energy regulations under the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach one has a slightly different context in this larger picture,\u201d Julian Karaguesian, a lecturer at McGill University and an expert on international trade, told National Post. \u201cBut they all have the same common theme, that amidst a broader pullback of American companies from Canada, we\u2019re having these small, symbolic victories, which are great at this time when people are hurting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here are a few examples.<\/p>\n

Brewing school moves to Montreal from Chicago after 154 years<\/p>\n

The Siebel Institute of Technology<\/a>, the oldest beer brewing school in the Americas, is moving to Montreal citing regulatory changes in the United States. Siebel said this month in a social media post<\/a> that it would move to a site near Molson\u2019s original brewery on Jan. 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe decision follows a comprehensive review of operational costs, industry trends (and) increased student visa challenges to enter the United States,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

This year, the Trump administration made cuts to academic research, reduced the number of visas for foreign students and increased taxes on some elite schools. It revoked Harvard\u2019s ability to enrol foreign students, a move later blocked by a federal judge.<\/p>\n

John Hannafan, Siebel\u2019s general manager and director of education, said: \u201cRecent regulatory changes in the U.S. have made it much more challenging for many of our international students, who have become the majority of our student body, to attend classes in person. This relocation of North America classroom operations to Montreal allows us to pivot without sacrificing the student experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canada has reduced its own student visas over the last two years from record highs. But Karaguesian said it\u2019s a different story in the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea that you could potentially be rounded up in the street, even temporarily, by an ICE agent, scared a lot of foreign students,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not the Canadian way to go and round up people. And we don\u2019t have anywhere near the kind of anti-foreigner message in our country that\u2019s currently the case in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

Siebel plans to move near the original Molson brew site in January.<\/p>\n

Liqueur maker moves production to Montreal from Minnesota<\/p>\n

Phillips Distilling Company, the maker of Sour Puss liquor, recently signed a five-year deal<\/a> to produce its colourful sweet-and-sour beverage in Montreal after several provinces stopped stocking American-made alcohol.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vast, vast majority \u2014 about 98 per cent \u2014 is sold in Canada,\u201d Andy England, the company\u2019s CEO, told Global News<\/a>. \u201cIn many ways, we think of it as being a Canadian brand. All the more reason we should produce it in Canada now.\u201d Production began at Montreal\u2019s Station 22 distillery in the city\u2019s east end this month.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was totally against retaliatory tariffs,\u201d said Karaguesian, \u201cbut the use of procurement policy by provincial liquor boards, taking U.S.-made alcohol off the shelves, in this case it produced a small victory. And also the main market is here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

Andy England, CEO of Phillips Distilling Company, with a bottle of Sour Puss flavoured liqueur.<\/p>\n

Alberta\u2019s Deep Sky becomes new home for U.S. carbon capture facility<\/p>\n

CarbonCapture Inc., which was set to build a direct air capture facility<\/a> in Arizona this year, pivoted when U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright terminated billions of dollars in incentives from the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. Now it\u2019s up and running in Innisfail, Alberta, in partnership with Canadian company Deep Sky.<\/p>\n

Alex Petre, CEO of Deep Sky<\/a>, told National Post that \u201crecent changes in the U.S. and I would say the overall political instability\u201d was behind the move.<\/p>\n

She added that Deep Sky does not actively seek out such businesses. But \u201cinterest from American companies in Canada has definitely increased tremendously in the past year.\u201d<\/p>\n

In September, Trump gave a speech at the United Nations<\/a> in which he called climate change a \u201ccon job\u201d and said talk of rising temperatures came from \u201cstupid people.\u201d He added: \u201cThe carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Petre said Washington\u2019s stance on carbon capture \u201chas really been unclear and sometimes unfavourable in this past year. It\u2019s hard to set yourself up to innovate and to deploy new technology if you do not have regulatory stability, as well as line of sight to how to fund such endeavours.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cOn the flip side, Canada has what is probably one of the most supportive regulatory and financial systems currently set up for carbon removal, and specifically for direct air capture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

Deep Sky\u2019s direct air capture facility in Innisfail, Alberta.<\/p>\n

Is it all a reaction to Trump?<\/p>\n

Karaguesian said that, while much can be tied to recent changes in U.S. foreign and domestic policy, the Trump administration isn\u2019t the first to battle Canada on the business front.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should remember that during (U.S. President Joe) Biden it was also bad,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Inflation Reduction Act put a trillion dollars in tax credits to relocate to the United States. Trump is using tariffs. Biden was using subsidies, and that pulled away investment from Canada. The trend started more than a decade ago. It really started in the aftermath of the financial crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Will there be others examples like these?<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to read too much into what happens afterwards, but it\u2019s almost some kind of omen (of) the future direction of international trade,\u201d Karaguesian said. \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re going back to deep globalization. And I don\u2019t think the Americans are.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he looked at Sour Puss as \u201ca microcosm, an example of a company now moving to produce the product close to its market. And maybe that\u2019s a sign of the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also pointed out that Canada has a lot of untapped wealth. \u201cWe\u2019re sitting on, per capita, the largest inheritance in the world in terms of natural mineral wealth and natural resource wealth, and the second largest in absolute terms, after Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cAnd we\u2019re perfect trading partners for East Asia. So that gives me hope that \u2026 we will be able to offset some of this by diversifying trade. Part of it will be companies moving back to Canada to be close to their markets, or because we have more clean energy credits, or because we\u2019re not rounding up people in the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com<\/a> and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amid the economic uncertainty of the trade war between the United States and Canada are some silver linings.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[141211,45,49,48,29861,1687,141210,2338,20741,141213,141212,178],"class_list":["post-317362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-american-companies","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-foreign-students","tag-international-trade","tag-julian-karaguesian","tag-montreal","tag-national-post","tag-regulatory-changes","tag-siebel-institute-of-technology","tag-u-s"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}