Feb. 20, 2025 "Grocers stocking up on Canadian, international suppliers as shoppers avoid American": Today I found this article by Rosa Saba on BNN Bloomberg:
The two countries are in the midst of a truce that’s set to end in early March, but grocers aren’t waiting around to see what happens.
“I think this is just the new normal that we’d better get used to working with, and in some cases, ‘working with’ just means finding other, better long-term solutions that are reliable and stable,” said Gordon Dean, who owns and operates five grocery stores in Ontario and Quebec.
Buying Canadian has always been the motto at Mike Dean Local Grocer. But the company is doubling down on what Dean calls “Canadian content.”
In the produce aisle, where Canada is particularly reliant on U.S. imports, Dean said suppliers are already diversifying.
About two weeks before Trump’s initial tariff announcement Feb. 1, Dean said suppliers started moving away from U.S.-sourced produce.
“They are pulling some product from areas of the world that we typically as Canadians aren’t used to,” he said.
“I’m selling green grapes and red grapes on my shelf right now that are product of Namibia.”
The weaker loonie has made it easier for Dean to justify the switch. He said he recently turned down several price increase requests from suppliers on U.S. products.
“We’re just going to discontinue them. I’m going to find a different replacement that is domestic,” he said.
Rick Rabba, the president of Toronto-area chain Rabba Fine Foods, is also thinking about what tariffs could mean for the fruits and vegetables he sells in his stores.
The company has been holding meetings with primarily Ontario producers to find alternatives “because we don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said.
Though Canada is quite reliant on imported fruits and vegetables in the winter, Rabba said the domestic greenhouse sector has expanded in recent years, meaning there are more alternatives for some produce, such as lettuce, than there used to be.
“It’s not that we have anything against produce from the United States. It’s just that we want to make sure that our GTA-based, Canadian-based customers don’t have an interruption of supply, regardless of what happens. So we always want to make sure that we’re looking for alternatives,” he said.
In a recent newsletter, Peter Chapman of consulting firm SKUFood said specialty grocers have been “all over” the buy Canadian trend, as they can differentiate themselves by reacting quickly.
Of the major grocers, he said Loblaw has been the most vocal.
“This is definitely an opportunity for Canadian manufacturers
... now is the time to leverage the opportunity,”
he wrote.
Loblaw spokeswoman Catherine Thomas said the grocer is talking with its existing vendors to source more Canadian products, as well as looking into new and alternative local vendors.
It’s also looking to broaden its supply chain beyond the U.S., she said in a statement:
“Where we have products historically made or grown in the U.S. with limited Canadian options, we will look for alternatives from other countries.”
Loblaw is also showcasing products prepared in Canada in its stores, online and in flyers, Thomas said.
The company added a “swap and shop” feature to its app which is already showing results.
On a call discussing its latest earnings report Thursday, CEO Per Bank said Loblaw is already seeing a “a significant uplift in sales (of) products identified as prepared in Canada.”
He told analysts that produce will be the hardest U.S. segment to replace given Canada’s reliance on it, especially in the winter.
Other products, such as cleaning supplies, can be more easily replaced including with the company’s own private-label brands.
Pierre St-Laurent, chief operating officer of Sobeys and Safeway owner Empire Co. Ltd., said customers are asking where products come from,
and the grocer is responding with more signage and information to help them make their picks.
The company has lots of flexibility in its supply chain to respond to shifts in availability or price, he said in an interview.
“If a (U.S.) supplier comes to us ... with a cost increase because of tariffs, our answer will be no,” he said.
St-Laurent expects Canadian suppliers will adjust their operations to respond to growing demand. But he also thinks as time goes on, U.S. suppliers may have to make some changes.
“Some companies and some suppliers decided to concentrate their production in one country for economic reasons,” he said.
“But right now, the dynamic is changing. If they want to do business in Canada and
they want to be competitive,
they will have to revisit their manufacturing organization.”
Metro spokeswoman Marie-Claude Bacon said the grocer will
“continue to give priority to local Canadian products whenever possible,”
and work hard to mitigate any price impact.
Bacon said for many years
Metro has prioritized
and promoted
local products in its stores.
But in the coming weeks, the company plans to
“optimize the visibility of local products”
in-store,
online
and in flyers,
she said in a statement.
Dean said though shoppers are happy to substitute many different foods for an alternative,
big brand names like Frito-Lay and PepsiCo are harder to swap out.
“If you look at Frito-Lay, there’s tons of Canadian chip companies that could replace them, but they’re such a monster in the category,” he said.
There’s also confusion among shoppers over what counts as Canadian, he added, as many large multinational companies have manufacturing operations in Canada.
“I own grocery stores, and I’m in the same boat,” he said.
“What counts? Like, if they’re
creating Canadian jobs,
paying Canadian payroll,
using Canadian tomatoes,
that’s kind of Canadian.”
Rosa Saba, The Canadian Press
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 20, 2025.
Companies in this story: (TSX:L, TSX:EMP.A, TSX:MRU)
Feb. 27, 2025 "‘Buy Canada, bye America’: Trump’s taunts spur fury in the north": Today I found this article by Geoffrey Morgan on BNN Bloomberg:
As U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened tariffs, made 51st state jabs and referred to the country’s prime minister as “Governor Trudeau,” furious Canadian consumers have turned into vindictive shoppers: American-made products are out; everything else is in.
Ellen Bessner, a Toronto-based securities litigator and Izzy’s owner, recently went through her house looking for US products to replace. The last one standing is an American brand of makeup remover — she’s now searching for a Canadian alternative to switch out before the bottle is even empty.
“I have always been focused on ‘buy Canada,’ but with the threat of tariffs, I am taking it up several notches,” said Bessner, a partner at Babin Bessner Spry.
It’s a significant shift for a country that purchases almost as much in US goods each year as the entire European Union — a total of $349.4 billion in 2024, according to the US Department of Commerce.
Canada has also been the largest source of foreign tourists to the US, according to the US Travel Association, with travelers spending $20.5 billion last year. Now, many are cancelling trips.
“It speaks to an awareness — and an intention to vote with their wallets,” said Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute.
A survey of 3,310 Canadians by the Vancouver-based research firm last week found that 85% of people plan to replace US products with alternatives.
Nearly half of respondents said they would change their travel plans to avoid the country.
Irene Taylor, a managing partner at consulting firm Praxis Partners, recently scrapped plans for a two-month stay in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Instead, she’s planning to visit Canada’s east coast — despite the at-least 20 degree Fahrenheit swing in temperature.
Meanwhile, one of the country’s largest law firms, Fasken Martineau DuMoulin, lost C$1 million ($699,000) in deposits by ripping up plans to bring its lawyers to Las Vegas, according to a Globe and Mail report.
Canadian airlines also have begun to scale back flights to the US in anticipation of falling demand.
“One thing we can do is not give our dollars to the United States right now,” said Curtis Brown, principal at Winnipeg-based Probe Research, which found in a recent poll that more than six in 10 respondents are planning to avoid vacations to the US. Brown said his own daughter’s school division recently cancelled field trips to the country.
In grocery stores across Canada, the newly emboldened buy-domestic movement is anything but subtle. Bright red maple leaves adorn signs blaring “Shop Canadian” that are hung over homegrown foods, to help consumers find what they’re looking for.
At Loblaw Cos., the country’s largest food purchaser, sales of Canadian food had already grown by 8% in the first week of February before the signs went up, the company’s chief executive officer said in a LinkedIn post.
“When I’m out in stores, every single person I meet, they want help and guidance on how to buy more Canadian products and we’re really trying to do everything we can to help them,” Per Bank added on a Feb. 20 earnings call.
At a competing Metro Inc. grocery store in downtown Toronto last week, US-grown apples went largely untouched next to nearly empty racks offering Canadian options. Mexican bell peppers were nearly out of stock near an unloved pile of US counterparts, which had begun to soften and crack.
The boycotts aren’t limited to the grocery aisles: Greg Taylor, chief investment officer at Purpose Investments in Toronto, said he’s skipping over the American section of restaurants’ wine lists “out of spite.”
Experts said the wrath of Canadians is a bearish sign for US businesses as Trump threatens to expand his trade war. On Feb. 26, the president said he was “not stopping the tariffs” on Canada and Mexico that may hit as early as next week, and that he still planned to go ahead with tariffs against the EU and other trading partners.
“Donald Trump has the ability to get people in other countries upset quite easily,” said David Soberman, a strategic marketing professor at the University of Toronto, who expects a similar reaction from consumers in Europe and Asia. Companies with executives aligned with Trump, like Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc., could face a particularly sharp backlash.
Tesla sales plunged 45% last month across Europe as other EV makers saw a surge in demand. Chrystia Freeland, who’s in the race to become Canada’s next prime minister, has already floated the idea of applying a 100% tariff on the company’s electric vehicles.
Canadian companies that opt to move their investments or people to the US also risk public rebuke. Mark Carney, the central-banker-turned-politician who’s also running to replace Justin Trudeau, is facing attacks from political rivals because Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. decided to move its head office to New York from Toronto while he was the company’s chair. A Quebec-based trucking company, TFI International Inc., abandoned plans to redomicile in the US after shareholders pushed back.
“We want to keep our economic sovereignty,” said Christopher Dip, a Montreal-based engineer who developed an app called Buy Beaver that scans barcodes to tell consumers whether a product is Canadian.
Dip said it’s the fastest-growing app he and his business partner have developed, garnering 35,000 downloads in two weeks.
To stick to their principles,
Canadians will have to make some sacrifices,
not least on cost.
Citrus fruits will need to be flown in from South America rather than Florida.
Some locally grown produce requires energy-intensive greenhouses through harsh Canadian winters.
And the Angus Reid survey also found that 41% of respondents said they would stop using Amazon.com for e-commerce.
Imported goods from Europe or Asia will have a much longer journey to get to the shops than products delivered by train or truck from the US.
Still, furious Canadians said it’s worth the extra money.
Bessner, whose Pyredoodle loves her new, all-Canadian diet, said she knows some people can’t take on the extra costs of avoiding US goods — and that’s fine.
“For those who can afford it, they should be dogged about buying Canadian-made to make up for Canadians who cannot,” she said.
©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
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