U.S. President Donald Trump’s 30-day pause on tariff threats is too little too late for some retailers and shoppers who say they want a future with less reliance on American products and more support for goods made in Canada.
Family Foods, a locally-owned grocery store in Winnipeg, looked the same Monday as it has for decades, except for bright pink ‘Proudly Canadian’ stickers now dotting shelves throughout the store.
“It’s been a busy day and I still have a lot of work ahead of me,” said manager Elaine LaMonica, going product by product, aisle by aisle putting stickers on products made in Canada.
“We’re doing our best to inform our customers where things come from and we are absolutely going to push our local companies too,” she said.
They’re looking to stock more Manitoba-made goods from now on.
LaMonica said the bakery and meat shop is already fully Canadian. The dairy section has a mix of Canadian and American products and because of the time of year, the produce section is currently about 60 per cent American. But they’re looking at ways to reduce that.
Many customers say they are too.
“I had been thinking for a long time about buying only Canadian, and now I make sure,” said Carillee Poetker, though she says her buying shift goes back to the pandemic, not Trump.
Shopper Dana Reynolds opens a bag to show her grocery haul of cheese, eggs, bread, tomatoes, sour cream, mustard, coffee and apples, all Canadian.
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“I made the shift a couple of weeks ago when Trump started with the ‘annexing Canada’ talk and taunting us about being the 51st state. I don’t want my money supporting the economy of a country led by someone like that,” Reynolds said.
“It feels like everything going on south of the border is making people do what we should have probably done long ago and shift our focus to being self-reliant. I hope that’s the case.”
Reynolds says gardening this summer “will no longer be something I just talk about. It’s happening. Not just because of four years ahead of Trump threats an uncertainty but the cost of produce and the recalls, why bother.”
Blake Lelyk has been in the grocery business for just two weeks as the new owner of a Winnipeg foodie favorite, G.J. Andrews Food and Wine Shop.
A potential trade war isn’t something he thought would be part of the transition.
“It’s been a shock after only being in the store for two weeks now, but its something we’re going to get through and we’re taking it as it comes,” Lelyk said.
Most of the products in the food boutique are Canadian and European with a heavy focus on local and hard-to-find specialty items imported from Europe.
“On the grocery side, we don’t have a lot of American products,” Lelyk said.
He estimates only 15-20 per cent of the wine section is American and while tariff talk ramped up in recent days, so did inquiries from people wanting to scoop up U.S. labels, worried they’d be unavailable for the foreseeable future.
With the U.S. now holding off on tariffs, he says the store will continue to purchase American wines.
“It’s the consumers choice, we have American wines on shelves and if someone chooses to purchase that they’ll still be able to unless something does change by the (Manitoba) government saying we have to remove it from our shelves and in that case, we’ll do what we have to do.”
The Manitoba government dialed back it’s ban on buying U.S. booze after Trump’s 30-day pause on tariff threats against Mexico and Canada.
Whether tariffs come eventually or not, Lelyk says his store will have a new focus.
“It is a good chance for us now to add more Canadian wines and wines from outside of the US and get people more interested in those and show the remarkable wines that are available in Canada,” he said.
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