Like the US-Canadian trade war is expanding, some Canadians are purposefully reducing their shopping options by staying local.
It’s not easy.
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump’s 50% tariffs on about $20 billion of Canadian goods came into effect, leading to a dollar-for-dollar policy. retaliatory tariffs from Canada – the latest escalation since the trade war officially began in March 2025, impacting sectors ranging from manufacturing to alcohol.
To push back, some Canadian companies started displaying “Made in Canada” labels in their stores last spring, prompting shoppers to trade their American groceries for more locally produced products.
Canadian companies have been promoting locally made products since the start of the trade war. Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Sarah Chudleigh, a 28-year-old content marketer in Montreal, clearly remembers a change around that time when she and her friends started prioritizing Canadian goods. “It felt like one big swing happened last year, maybe just before the summer, when it became more of a collective idea,” she told Business Insider.
While she’s made some great Canadian discoveries, like Ungava Gin and Quebec’s Romeo’s Gin, “there’s not always a direct exchange for the American goods we’re used to buying,” she said. In some cases, she still prefers to buy American products, such as oranges, that are sourced closer to Canada, and she believes they are of higher quality than those shipped from abroad.
From analyzing ‘made in’ labels to paying more for product exchanges, Canadians say shopping local doesn’t come without a price.
Discover Canadian homegrown products
Canadians have enjoyed buying more local, seasonal produce and Canadian swaps of their favorite American snacks. Creative Touch Imaging Ltd./NurPhoto via Getty Images
In early 2025, Alice Wu made the personal choice to shop more locally. Since then it has opened up her world.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve visited more local vendors, farms, greenhouses and boutiques in the past year than I have in the past five years,” Wu, 46, a senior public relations executive, told Business Insider.
When purchasing more seasonal productslike peaches at her local farmers market, the mother of two who lived on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls found it tastes fresher and costs less than the imported American version. General Mills’ switch to Nature’s Path cereal, a Canadian brand, hasn’t felt like a sacrifice either; personally, she thinks Nature’s Path tastes like a higher quality product.
While some swaps have required more trial and error (her 9-year-old son wasn’t a fan of replacing Oreos with the Canadian Dare cookies), overall she’s been able to find workarounds, like chocolate chip cookies baked at a local grocery store.
For some Canadians, staying more local has taken on a more literal meaning. Before the trade war, travel blogger Emilie Brillon, a mother of two who lived near Calgary, focused her business on global travel, including within the US.
Brillon now promotes travel within Canada and explores her country through road trips with her family. Emilie Brillon
Now she documents her family’s road trips through Canada and even converted her website to a “ca” URL.
“It’s so beautiful, and even within each province it’s so different,” Brillon, 38, told Business Insider. “We realize how lucky we are to be here.”
Along the way, she also enjoyed purchasing outdoor gear such as The Green Beaver sunscreen from Ontario, Slopedeck snow skates from British Columbia and Farm Girl cereal manufactured in Ontario.
The confusing world of ‘maple wash’
Some labels can be misleading and sometimes promote products imported from or made in the US. Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Last year, some Canadian companies advertised “made in Canada” products found themselves in a sticky controversy. They were “maple wash” their items, misleading consumers by placing maple leaf stickers on imported products – including some from the US – to indicate they are Canadian.
For some consumers this meant a new hurdle in the supermarket.
“Now I make more of a point of looking at the label of the actual product to see if it’s made in Canada or packaged in Canada or if it has anything to do with Canada,” Wu said.
Then there’s the question of what actually counts as one Canadian product.
“There are a lot of different ways to determine whether something is Canadian or not, and it’s not really a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer,” Chudleigh said. ‘Do the materials have to come from Canada? Probably not. Does it have to be made in Canada? Probably. Is it Canadian owned? That’s usually what they mean.’
Some labels make it clear when a US product is physically made in Canada. Creative Touch Imaging Ltd./NurPhoto via Getty Images
It is too time-consuming for Chudleigh to litigate whether every single product in her shopping cart qualifies as Canadian. “I take the simple answer, whether it’s Canadian or not, at face value,” she said, trusting stores to use the correct labels. “Otherwise it would have taken so much effort.”
Leaving America comes with a price
Brillon said some Canadian swaps have been more expensive. Emilie Brillon
Some American products are just too hard to give up.
For Brillon it is the technical products of Google and Meta which she uses for her work as a content creator. For Wu, it’s Lego for her children.
Some fresh produce is also difficult to obtain without metaphorically crossing the border. Brillon sometimes buys U.S.-imported cauliflower and lettuce during the off-season winter months, when they are harder to find, at her local supermarkets, which still sell American products.
Then there are costs you have to take into account. For meat, Wu says she skips the label and goes for the lower price. “As a mother, budget is still a concern and sometimes an American product is simply priced much cheaper than the Canadian equivalent,” she said.
Brillon said her grocery bills have increased overall since she started prioritizing more Canadian products. “I know it is a real privilege to be able to decide on a product based on its label of origin and not on its price,” said Brillon. “I know not everyone in this economy can do that.”
While Brillon said she’s grateful her family can afford to pay a little more, she hopes so trade war quickly ends: her husband is from California and they have friends and family in the United States. Although she still promotes travel only within Canada on her blog and social media, Brillon’s family goes to the U.S. once a year so her children can see their nieces and nephews.
“Everyone is nice, we’re still close and we’ve had a good relationship,” she said. “It’s a shame we’re here today.”
Meanwhile, some Canadians see shopping local as a non-confrontational way to express their opinions. “I’m not going to vent on social media,” Wu said. “I think I can just do it as an individual, do what I can to support the country I live in.”
