Ordinarily, Skida does a brisk business in Canada. You can find hats and ski accessories made by the Burlington-based company in stores across the provinces, and Canadians usually visit Skida’s website in droves to buy products directly.
“Our values as a company are aligned with Canadians,” said Charlotte Addison, Skida’s vice president of marketing and sales. “The winters are long and cold and dark in Canada, and we make brightly colored hats. They kind of help cheer things up.”
That’s why Addison was so alarmed when a Canadian customer who had been buying regularly from Skida’s website for 13 years reached out to say they would be boycotting the brand indefinitely.
“After years and years of enjoying Skida products, we will not be purchasing anything further due to the attack of Trump on Canada,” the customer wrote.
That customer wasn’t the only one. Addison said that in February, as a movement to boycott U.S. goods and services began picking up steam on the northern border, Canadians accounted for 30% less business on the company’s website than they had during the same period last year.
“I think the boycott is very real,” Addison said. “It is absolutely affecting us.”
With tensions rising between the U.S. and Canada, Vermont businesses have been caught in the crossfire of a simmering trade war.
Already facing the prospect of price hikes and supply chain disruptions due to tariffs on Canadian goods that Trump has enacted and postponed multiple times, Vermont companies now have to contend with another knock-on effect of fraying relations between the nations: Canadians are shunning Vermont goods and canceling trips to the state.
The opening salvo of the trade war came in early February, when Trump imposed — and then postponed — sweeping tariffs on imports from Canada.
Since then, Trump has continued to enact and delay a wide range of levies on the U.S.’s northern neighbor. Meanwhile, the president and his allies have called for the U.S. to annex Canada, referring to Canada as the 51st state and calling its prime minister its governor.
Canadians have responded in kind by slapping retaliatory tariffs on imports from the U.S. And in recent weeks, the premiers of Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec have also halted the sale of U.S. alcohol products — including Vermont brands — in liquor stores.
Last week, Ryan Christiansen, president and lead distiller of Barr Hill, announced in a Facebook post that a retailer from Quebec had cancelled a major shipment of spirits from the Montpelier-based distillery, which were no longer allowed on shelves in the province.
“Overnight, Quebec went from a market where we cannot seem to fulfill the consumer driven demand, to a deficit in our business plan we’ll struggle to replace,” Christiansen wrote.
At a Wednesday press conference, Vermont officials said that they were actively negotiating with the premiers of Canadian provinces as well as Canada’s General Consul in Boston to try to get Vermont-made liquors and spirits back in Canadian stores.
“We really value our relationship and we want to keep … products here on the shelves and we’re going to ask them to do the same,” Commerce Secretary Lindsay Kurrle said. “Hopefully we can try to resolve this in a really friendly manner.”
But it’s unclear whether such state-level diplomacy can reverse the deeper rift caused by Trump’s trade policies and inflammatory rhetoric.
Even if Canadian officials do retract the country’s retaliatory tariffs and repeal bans on U.S. goods, Vermont businesses could still have to contend with a grassroots boycott movement that only seems to be gathering momentum.
“There’s definitely a general anti-American-brand sentiment that has been communicated through our sales reps,” said Carina Hamel, co-founder of Bivo, a Richmond-based company that produces stainless steel water bottles for cyclists.
Hamel said that, earlier this month, Bivo was already dealing with the price shock of the 10% levy — since raised to 25% — that Trump had imposed on the steel used in the company’s product when a retailer in British Columbia contacted her saying they would no longer be carrying the brand.
“With Trups (sic) embargo we will no longer be buying US products. I’m so sorry to leave just when we found you 
Vermont businesses could face a drop in demand from within the state, too, as Canadian tourists have begun to steer clear of their southern border.
Julie Marks, president of the Vermont Short Term Rentals Association, said that rental property managers and Airbnb hosts around Vermont have seen cancellations from Canadians who had planned trips to the Green Mountain State.
Although it was too early to collect concrete data, Marks said, she has also “heard from plenty of members that they’re seeing fewer reservations come through now than in previous years.”
“I imagine we’re only going to be seeing more accounts of this,” Marks said. “This is going to have a huge impact on our entire economy, whether you’re in tourism or not.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: As U.S.-Canada relations sour, Vermont businesses are facing boycotts.