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The Canadian Press files<\/p>\n
Shoppers have been caught up in \u2018Buy Canadian\u2019 fervour since U.S. President Donald Trump announced tariffs on Canadian goods in 2025. It has only increased in intensity.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s tyrannical tactics.<\/p>\n
In a rhetorical and attitudinal sense, we are a country galvanized. But what\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
What, exactly, does \u201cbuy Canadian\u201d 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?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s first wave of ill-considered tariffs.<\/p>\n
\n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n
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As for other \u201cbuy Canadian\u201d choices \u2026 as it turns out, it isn\u2019t that easy to know. In the inevitable reaction to Trump\u2019s bullying, insults, tariff impositions and patently juvenile threats to Canadian sovereignty (Lake America? Seriously?), businesses everywhere have scrambled to declare themselves \u201cproudly Canadian,\u201d even when the products on offer are genuinely anything but.<\/p>\n
Just exactly how Canadian is something that claims such a disinction? In order for its label to say \u201cproduct of Canada,\u201d at least 98 per cent of the major ingredients, labour and processing involved in producing it must be Canadian. If the label says \u201cmade in Canada,\u201d however, only 51 per cent of the production cost must be Canadian. And things get murkier when the process involves companies that have bases in Canada but subcontract production abroad, making it difficult to pinpoint how much Canadian materials and labour are involved.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s effort involved in buying Canadian, and sacrifice. Such things are necessary when a nation is \u201cat war.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis emotional response to President Trump\u2019s tariffs and remarks about Canada has increased people\u2019s willingness to take on a little bit of extra work or increase their efforts to facilitate that switch,\u201d says Fran\u00e7ois Neville, associate professor of strategic management at McMaster University\u2019s DeGroote School of Business. \u201cIt\u2019s costing them more in terms of money, time and effort, but it seems they are motivated to bear these costs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The thing about keeping your elbows up is that eventually your arms get tired. Fighting our way through what remains of the Trump ordeal is going to require determination, stamina and unwavering focus, but Canadians are up to the challenge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cBuy Canadian,\u201d they tell us, as trade tensions escalate between Canada and the United States. \u201cElbows up,\u201d the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":883118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-883117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883117","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=883117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/883118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}