The Power of the Boycott

Canadians Tell Trump To Stuff It

Here we go again.

Only a week after promising a “pause,” Donald Trump has thrown massive tariffs on Canada and Mexico. And he continues to threaten our nationhood.

Did anyone think this guy would do anything different? He is a crook. His word means nothing. The whole world knows this. But the world is also beginning to learn that when Canadians draw a hard line, we aren’t kidding around.

The power of the grassroots Canadian boycott is being felt in a big way across the United States. Just ask the US tourism industry.

Since Trump began his goon squad reign, they have suffered a precipitous plunge in reservations and trip bookings from Canada. Donald Trump says there is nothing America needs from Canada.

Turns out Canadians are by far the biggest spenders of tourism dollars in the United States. We might be polite, but we hate bullies. In homes across this country, Canadians are resisting tyranny by simply changing their tourism plans and shopping lists.

And this is causing the US tourism industry to panic.

Here’s what’s at stake:

• In Florida, Canadians represent 38% of the tourist dollars coming into the state.

• In Texas, Canadians spent $403 million last year. Both states have seen significant cancellations, as have other states.

• If just 10% of Canadians hold firm in the boycott, it would mean the loss of 140,000 jobs.

It is still too early to say just how many Canadians have decided to rip up their tourism plans, but the messages I am getting from across the country paint a picture of a grassroots boycott that has become deeply embedded in the sense of Canadian nationhood.

One woman told me she took a loss when she cancelled bookings for a six-person golf trip to Arizona.

“But this was about defending my country,” she said resolutely.

Others have shared stories about calling their hotel in Florida to say forget it. They aren’t returning as long as a convicted felon is in office.

Online platforms are flooded with tales of people no longer crossing the border for that weekend shopping venture. Folks who were looking to go to New York this summer are either going to Montreal or Europe.

Kentucky is already beginning to panic.

In the lead-up to the last showdown, liquor stores across Canada pulled all American spirits off the shelves. At a small northern town in my region, the local outlet for the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) spent 5 ½ hours pulling Kentucky bourbon off the shelves.

And that’s just one store in one small Canadian town.

The staff told me they are keeping all the boxes and crates on hand to pull the booze off the shelf again if Trump comes back for round two. And even though the bottles are back on display, sales are seriously down.

I like a good old-fashioned, but since the fascists took power, I’ll be damned if I am going to buy their product. In the process I have found some nice tasting Canadian alternatives.

Little wonder the Governor of Kentucky is trying to settle things down. He has been calling on Trump to put a sock in it while reassuring Canadians that we are valued partners. But let’s be honest: at this point in our shared history, we are no longer friends. As Kentucky’s biggest market begins to dry up, you can bet your Yankee dollar that the heat is going to turn on Washington.

The Power of Boycotts

As a tool of resistance, the boycott has a very long tradition. What makes the Canada 2025 boycott unique is that no one organized it. There are no leaders. There is no strategic team looking to use it as a negotiating tool. This resistance campaign has sprung from the determination of ordinary people to resist tyranny.

The boycott of products, alcohol, and vacation destinations is getting stronger all the time.

No doubt, the fascist sock puppets around Trump will ridicule these efforts as meaningless. But that’s because they don’t know their own history.

Consider the story of Rosa Parks. She is the iconic face of the civil rights movement, but what transformed her individual act of resistance into a full-on attack on systemic evil was the power of the boycott.

For 381 days, Black citizens of Montgomery, Alabama, withheld their ten-cent bus fares and walked to work. In some cases, those walks were brutally long, but people chose to boycott rather than bend to the racist tyranny of the South.

Segregation was a monolith, backed by the courts, the police and extreme violence. However, by withholding a ten-cent fare, the Black population found a tool that upended the white power structure. Over the year, an individual may have only withheld $38 worth of transit fees to Montgomery, but when 40,000 people did this every single day, week in, week out, the seemingly impregnable system of hate began to crack and break apart.

The Trump Effect

Guys like Trump believe that intimidation and threats are the way of the world. It is the ideology of this new age of gangsterism. But what makes the power of the Canadian boycott unbeatable is that the more Trump threatens, the more people dig in. And it is starting to cause serious economic pain.

As I have said before, the MAGA crowd might love chaos, but capitalism doesn’t.

Once the impacts of the bourbon boycott, the grocery store actions and the cancelled travel bookings begin to pile up, you are going to see a lot of American businesses calling out the predator-in-chief.

As for Canada? Keep the boycott going. We will last one day longer and be one day stronger than the creeper in Washington.

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