Many residents around St. Stephen, N.B. remain committed to staying on the Canadian side of the border, as U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war enters a new phase.
Trump’s sweeping list of blanket tariffs on Tuesday didn’t include Canada, but did target the country’s automobile industry with a 25 per cent hit.
Canadian border resident Brian Magnuson says he wasn’t expecting to hear anything in Trump’s announcement to change his mind about avoiding the states, and didn’t.
“I haven’t crossed the border in over than a month,” says Magnusson. “I used to do that once or twice a week.
“The state of the situation is changing so often… no real surprises, just shocks.”
Canadian border resident Jane Calhoun, who has several family members who live in the U.S., says she stopped travelling stateside once Trump heightened his threats about tariffs and annexation.
“Now, there’s no way I’ll go,” says Calhoun. “We’re still going to try, somehow, to get to see our kids and grandchildren.”
According to Statistics Canada, the latest figures show a 23 per cent drop year-over-year in the number of Canadians crossing back into Canada from the U.S. in February.
St. Stephen Mayor Allan MacEachern says there’s been a clear drop in local traffic at the area’s three bridges connecting St. Stephen to Calais, Maine, and doesn’t see any dramatic increase happening in the near future.
“I think it will take time, but we’ll see how this plays out,” he says. “I definitely want to get back to those days. In a small community like ours, we rely on the movement of people and product.”
In a statement, the Border Mayors Alliance – formed in response to Trump’s threats – says new tariffs against Canada’s automobile industry will be largely felt in Canadian communities near the U.S. border.
“We cannot overlook the trust lost by both Canadian and American working families supported by the auto and steel industries due to the U.S. administration’s deliberate decision to undermine their livelihoods with harmful tariffs,” says the Alliance.
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