Editorial: The boycott is working. Now let's double down

On Monday, the White House published the best progress report the Canadian boycott movement has ever received. It came in the form of a punishment.

President Donald Trump signed three proclamations on July 20 imposing an additional 50 per cent tariff on Canadian motor vehicles, alcoholic beverages, and dairy products, invoking Section 338 of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, a Depression-era statute aimed at countries that "discriminate" against American commerce.

The Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act is the most infamous economic own goal in American history, a law whose failure is so universally understood that it survives in pop culture mainly as the lesson a bored class dozes through in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the teacher droning "Anyone? Anyone?" before conceding it did not work and the country sank further into the Great Depression.

Our discrimination, according to the White House's own fact sheet, is that we stopped buying their products. Canadian imports of US alcohol have collapsed by 81 per cent since provinces pulled American brands from liquor store shelves. Imports of US vehicles are down 22 per cent.

The new tariffs stack on top of the 10 to 35 per cent duties Washington has levied on Canadian goods since early 2025, and they take effect 30 days after signing, in mid-August.

Prime Minister Mark Carney called the move the latest in a series of unilateral US actions violating CUSMA, the free trade agreement Washington itself negotiated, noting Canada has "merely matched" American measures.

At the premiers' meeting in Charlottetown on Wednesday, BC Premier David Eby called the escalation "just silly" and warned that the United States should not expect continued access to Canadian minerals if this conduct continues. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said everything is on the table.

Here in Langley, this round is personal. A 50 per cent tariff on Canadian alcohol lands squarely on the Township's growing wine country, and the dairy tariff targets the kind of family farms that still anchor our rural roads.

This is not a trade dispute. It is economic warfare

Let us stop pretending this is about trade deficits or dairy quotas. What is being waged against Canada is deliberate economic warfare, conducted by an administration that has reorganized the American government around corruption, extortion, and a twenty-first century fascism that no longer bothers to disguise itself. That is the machinery now aimed at us.

The goal is not a better deal. The President has said it out loud and repeatedly: he wants Canada as the fifty-first state, and he has mused about using economic force to get it. Tariffs engineered to inflict maximum pain are the instrument.

The objective is submission or collapse, an economy battered and a public exhausted enough that Canada accepts life as a vassal, whether annexed outright or simply governed from a distance, a colonial possession of an empire that is itself fading fast.

And the preferred route runs through our own ballot box, not their tanks.

Grind the economy down, seed the information environment with the same manufactured grievance that hollowed out American politics, and wait for Canadians to do the dirty work themselves by electing a government that will hold the door open.

This is current practice, not just history.

In Argentina last October, Washington finalized a $20 billion currency swap weeks before legislative elections, and Trump said openly that he would withhold assistance if Javier Milei's far-right coalition lost.

In February he endorsed the autocrat Viktor Orbán ahead of Hungary's April 12 vote, calling him a strong and powerful leader, and the Secretary of State followed with an emphatic endorsement of his own.

The National Security Strategy that codifies all this praises the growing influence of what it calls "patriotic European parties." Thankfully, Hungarians turned out in record numbers anyway and ended Orbán's sixteen-year rule.

Underlying these naked attempts at foreign election interference, the 2025 National Security Strategy defines the Americas as Washington's immediate sphere of influence, and the administration has announced what it openly calls a Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, sometimes referred to as the Donroe Doctrine.

The Trump Corollary goes further still. It is no longer about keeping rivals out. Instead, it claims the full right to manage the entire hemisphere with no regard for the sovereignty of foreign governments: to reward countries that cooperate, punish those that do not, and guarantee American access to strategic locations, critical supply chains, and mineral wealth.

The State Department said the quiet part on social media in January, posting that this is "OUR Hemisphere."

The softest target in the Canadian political scene is Alberta.

In January, the Financial Times reported that State Department officials had met with the Alberta Prosperity Project, a group campaigning for a referendum on leaving Canada, at least three times since the previous April.

Participants have described talks touching on American loan guarantees against Alberta's resources, converting the province from Canadian to US dollars, and a proposed $500 billion credit facility to backstop a newly independent Alberta.

The State Department says it meets routinely with civil society groups, that no commitments were made, and that there would be no further meetings.

Days before that reporting broke, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told a right-wing podcaster that Alberta would be "a natural partner for the US," praising its resources and floating the prospect of a referendum.

A billboard on the highway between Calgary and Edmonton, funded by a group tagged Canadians for the 51st State, urged Premier Smith to "Join the USA!"

Our own premier used a blunter word for travelling to a foreign capital to ask for help breaking up your country. He called it treason.

Empires lash out hardest on the way down, and a country confident in its own strength does not need a 1930 statute to bully its neighbour into buying its whisky.

So what do we do? Exactly what we have been doing, but harder. A government does not reach for that statute to punish a boycott that is failing.

These tariffs are an admission that ordinary consumer choices, multiplied across millions of households, are inflicting real pain on industries close to this administration.

The correct response is not to flinch. It is to make the boycott total: no US groceries, no US booze, no US retail giants, no US vacations.

Every dollar has to land somewhere. Here is where to land it.

Shop Langley first

Pickleboy Foods (23222 56th Ave., right off the roundabout at 232nd Street) is the hidden gem of the Township's farm country. The family-run market sells fresh local produce that beats anything trucked up from California, and stocks frozen berries year round for smoothies and baking. The daily sourdough is the sleeper hit. Arrive early, because it sells out by 10 a.m. most days.

Krause Berry Farms (6179 248th St.) covers the berry file in every other form, from u-pick fields to the farm market, so Washington-state berries never need to touch your cart again.

JD Farms Specialty Turkey (24726 52nd Ave.) raises its own specialty turkey and runs a deli and bistro that make swapping out imported American meat effortless.

Otter Co-op (3650 248th St., Aldergrove) has been member-owned since 1922. Groceries, fuel, hardware, and liquor, with profits paid back to local members instead of shipped to Arkansas or a Seattle data centre. A $10 lifetime membership is the cheapest divestment from Walmart, Costco, and Amazon you will ever make.

The Creative Bookworm (20438 Douglas Cres., Langley City) is under new ownership with big plans, from vinyl records to book clubs to audiobooks through Libro.fm that support the store directly. Wendel's Bookstore & Café in Fort Langley pairs its shelves with a full café. Between the two, there is no title Amazon carries that you cannot get here.

Republica Coffee Roasters (9203 Glover Rd., Fort Langley) roasts its own fair trade beans steps from the village core. Skip the Seattle-born chains and buy your bag and your latte from the people who roasted it.

Trading Post Brewing (20120 64th Ave.) rounds out the drinks file with Langley-made beer and a tasting room worth lingering in.

Vacation like the border is closed

Cancelling that Palm Springs or Seattle trip is not a sacrifice. It is an excuse.

Savary Island, off the northern Sunshine Coast, is the closest BC gets to the tropics: white sand, warm shallow water, and no car ferry at all. You arrive by foot-passenger water taxi from Lund, and the island is better for it.

The Lochside and Galloping Goose trails make Victoria the easiest car-free holiday in the province. Walk your bike onto the ferry, ride the Lochside's gentle 29 kilometres from Swartz Bay into the city, then spend a day on the Galloping Goose rail trail toward Sooke. Ocean views, easy grades, and not a parking lot in sight.

Alert Bay, on Cormorant Island off northern Vancouver Island, is home to the U'mista Cultural Centre, where Kwakwaka'wakw potlatch regalia seized by Canada in 1921 has come home. It is the single best place in BC to learn the history our schools skipped, and every visit supports the community doing that teaching.

Ainsworth Hot Springs, on Kootenay Lake, is 100 per cent owned by the Yaqan Nukiy, the Lower Kootenay Band of the Ktunaxa Nation, who reclaimed the site in 2015. Soak in the horseshoe cave, take the cold plunge, repeat until relaxed.

Scandinave Spa Whistler covers the posh end of the ledger: silent outdoor baths in the forest and an easy splurge that keeps luxury dollars in BC.

And for the ultimate staycation, book an Airbnb in South Langley and tour our own wine country by bike. Chaberton, Township 7, Glass House, and Backyard Vineyards sit on quiet rural roads, with Otter Trail and the brand-new Estate 1909 a longer ride north for the ambitious.

Every bottle bought at the cellar door is now a small act of trade policy.

Aim the anger at ballots, not neighbours

A boycott is aimed at a government, not at people. Many of us have American friends, family, and neighbours just across the line, and plenty of them are as appalled by this trade war as we are.

They deserve our kindness, not our contempt.

They also deserve honesty. Sweeping tariffs were no accident of this administration. They were a headline promise of the 2024 Trump campaign, repeated throughout it, and millions of Americans voted for exactly this.

Unfortunately, too many of them were so busy panicking about a debunked rumour that Haitian immigrants were eating people's pets that they tuned out the loud, prominent, and entirely correct voices warning that these tariffs were coming, and that Americans would end up paying for them.

Elections have consequences, and this is what those consequences look like from our side of the border.

Fortunately, another election is only a few months away.

The US midterm elections are happening in November with control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate up for grabs.

If the Americans in your life do not like being boycotted, encourage them, gently, to do something about the people who picked this fight in the first place.

Every dollar is a ballot

Boycotts fail when people get bored.

The White House has now told us, in writing and in percentages, that this one is working.

The correct response to being punished for our leverage is to use more of it. Buy the sourdough.

Go find your next favourite read at the Creative Bookworm. Book a Harbour Air flight to Lund and jump on the water taxi to Savary Island. And most importantly, leave the American imports to collect dust on the shelf.

Sources

• Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Imposes Additional Tariffs on Canada (White House, July 20, 2026)
• Statement by Prime Minister Carney on the United States administration's intention to impose new tariffs on Canadian goods (PMO, July 20, 2026)
• 'This is just silly': B.C.'s Eby threatens U.S. access to Canadian minerals over tariffs (Black Press, July 22, 2026)
• U.S.–Canada Tariffs: Timeline of Key Dates and Documents (Blakes)
• The United States to Host the Shield of the Americas Summit (US Department of State, March 2026)
• Shield of the Americas (US Department of State policy page)
• The "Shield of the Americas" Summit and Donald Trump's Latin America Strategy (The National Interest, April 2026)
• Shield of the Americas: Trump's new tool for hemispheric military coordination (Peoples Dispatch, March 2026)
• B.C. mining exploration company NovaRed recruits Kristi Noem as strategic adviser (The Globe and Mail, June 2026)
• Kristi Noem joins British Columbia copper junior in advisory role (MINING.COM, June 2026)
• Kristi Noem hired in strategic advisory role for B.C. mining company (Global News, June 2026)
• Otter Co-op Annual Report 2022 (membership details)
• Ainsworth Hot Springs Resort: History (ownership details)