Anne Cassidy
Journalist
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Supermarkets in Canada have put Canadian stickers on domestic products
Todd Brayman no longer buys his favorite red wine, which is from California.
A veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces, it is part of an increasing number of people in Canada, Europe and other parts of the world, which avoid buying American products due to President Trump’s prices and the treatment of American allies.
“I have in my life served alongside the American forces. It is simply deeply overwhelming and disappointing to see where we have the historical ties that our two countries have,” explains Mr. Brayman, who lives in Nova Scotia.
“But I think that for the moment, it’s time to get up and be counted, and in my mind, it means buying local and supported Canadian affairs.”
With his wife, Mr. Brayman replaced all the American products he had used, including his previous wine of choice, with Canadian alternatives.
“The phone booth of Luckett Red Wine, which is in Nova Scotia, is great,” he said.
However, the determination of Canadian products is not always easy. “Sometimes labeling can be misleading,” adds Mr. Brayman.
To help, he now uses an application on his phone which can scan the barcode of a product and identify where it comes from. If the product is identified as American, the application suggests Canadian alternatives.
The application, called Maple Scan, is one of the many emerging in Canada to help people buy local. Others include Canadian purchase, is it Canadian? and Canadian shopping.
The founder of Maple Scan, Sasha Ivanov, says that his application has had 100,000 downloads since its launch last month. He thinks that the momentum around the Canadian’s purchase is there to stay.
“Many Canadians have said to me:” I can’t believe “. It is important that we support local despite everything,” he said.
Canadians like Mr. Brayman boycott American products in response to a series of import rates introduced by Trump. These included 25% prices on all foreign cars, steel and aluminum, and 25% of prices on other Canadian and Mexican products.
Meanwhile, other European Union exports will receive prices of 20%, while the United Kingdom faces 10%.
Trump says prices will stimulate American manufacturing, will increase tax revenue and reduce the American trade deficit. However, they frightened the world markets, which decreased sharply in the past month.
Trump even expressed Canada’s desire to join the United States as a 51st state, which the Canadian government quickly rejects.
Ottawa also responded with $ 60 billion C ($ 42 billion; 32 billion pounds sterling) in counter rates, as well as additional prices in the American automotive sector.
And there has been a substantial drop in the number of Canadians going to the United States.
Todd Brayman
The veteran of the Royal Navy Todd Brayman says that he is “deeply upset” by the bad current relations between the United States and Canada
Groups dedicated to boycotting American products have also emerged in European countries. The momentum behind the boycott is particularly strong in Denmark, which the territory of Greenland Trump said he wanted to acquire.
The largest Denmark grocery store, Salling Group, recently introduced a symbol, a black star, on pricing labels to designate European brands.
Bo Albertus, director of the school who lives in Skovlunde, a suburb of Copenhagen, says that joining the boycott was his way of taking measures. “Declarations that Trump made to want to buy Greenland, it was just too much for me,” he said.
“I can’t do anything for the American political system, but I can vote with my credit card.”
One of Mr. Albertus’s first movements was to cancel his subscriptions to American streaming services, including Netflix, Disney Plus and Apple TV. “My 11-year-old daughter is a little bored about this, but that’s how it understands why I do it,” he said.
Albertus is the administrator of a Danish Facebook group dedicated to helping people boycott American products. In the group, which has 90,000 members, people share recommendations for local alternatives to American products, shoes with lawns.
Mr. Albertus says: “It is a movement that is much larger than our small country, so it all adds.”
Put Heerulff Christiansen, owner of a grocery store in Copenhagen called embroidered, stopped storing American products, such as Cheetos Crisppps and Hershey’s Chocolate, in his store. It replaces them with Danish or European products as far as possible.
Ms. Christiansen also exchange products that she uses at home. It finds a little easier to replace than others. “Coca-Cola is easy to replace with Jolly Cola, a Danish brand,” she said. “But technology, like Facebook, is completely difficult to avoid.”
She thinks that the boycott movement in Denmark helps people channel their anger against the politicians and rhetoric of Trump. “I think it’s more for the Danish people to feel good that they do something,” she said.
Put Heerulff Christiansen
The Danish merchant put Heerulff Christiansen eliminated the American products from his shelves
Douglas Irwin, professor of economics at Dartmouth College in the United States, specializing in the history of American trade policy, believes that the economic impact of the boycott can be limited. “It is difficult to judge the economic importance that consumer boycotts will be in terms of trade reduction with the United States,” he said.
“In the past, the boycotts have not lasted long and have not succeeded. It starts as a reaction hostile to American action but tends to fade over time,” he said.
For the moment, however, the Canadian feeling of Canada stimulates sales of many local brands. The CEO of the Canadian grocer Loblaw published on Linkedin that the weekly sales of Canadian products were up two -digit.
Bianca Parsons, from Alberta to Canada, is at the origin of an initiative aimed at promoting locally manufactured goods, called Made in Alberta, which, according to her, has had an increase in interest since the introduction of prices. “We now get more than 20,000 strokes (on the site) every two weeks.”
Ms. Parsons, who is the executive director of the Alberta Food Processors Association, adds: “I asked the producers to contact us and to say:” I sell in stores that I would never sell before, thank you very much “.”
Several Canadian provinces, including Ontario and Nova Scotia, have removed American manufacturing alcoholic drinks from their alcohol stores in response to prices, a movement by the boss of Jack Daniel, Brown-Forman, said it is “worse than prices”.
Among the American companies feeling the impact Figure Caledonia Spirits, a distiller based in Vermont, near the Canadian border. Ryan Christiansen, President of Caledonia and Distiller chief, said that his company had an order on the right track to send Quebec canceled directly after the prices were announced.
“My feeling is that everyone is just a little too aggressive and, unfortunately, I think America has started,” explains Mr. Christiansen. “I understand that the action that America has taken needed a counter-reaction.
“If that did not stand for me, I would be at the table to try to solve this problem in a friendly way, and I hope that the leaders of America adopt this approach.”
Ryan Christiansen
The American distiller Ryan Christiansen wants American leaders to adopt a more “friendly” approach to business issues
Ethan Frisch, the co-founder of Burlap & Barrel, an American company of Spice based in New York, which also exports to Canada, is more concerned with the impact of prices on imports of his business and the increase in inflation in the United States than consumer boycott.
He says: “I think there is this hypothesis that, if you boycott an American business, it will have an impact on the economy and perhaps change the situation. I think that this hypothesis, unfortunately, is not exact.
“The (American) economy crashes by itself. Companies like ours have trouble without boycotting.”
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