Buy Canadian Will Transform Supply Chains

Trump's tariff chaos will prompt local food producers to expand at record speed

- By Mark Pupo

Despite a blink-and-you'll-miss-it growing season, our country is, in fact, a major food exporter—some $100 billion a year, mostly to the U.S. Yet our food-manufacturing sector is barely growing. After NAFTA came into effect in 1994, multinational companies like J.M. Smucker and Unilever relocated factories to the U.S. and Mexico, or anywhere with cheaper workers who've never met a union. In 2004, for instance, Smucker’s bought Bick’s and soon moved its pickling operations from small-town Ontario to Wisconsin. Aside from the couple hundred people who lost their jobs, the average Canadian didn’t care where their cukes were pickled, provided a 1L jar of baby dills never became a luxury buy.

Then Donald Trump mused about the 51st state, and everything in the supermarket became instantly politicized. Shoppers turned U.S. products upside down and backwards. They boycotted. They expected grocers to stick tiny Canadian flags beside what was safe to buy. Nearly a year into this, they’re still prioritizing Buy Canadian—and each time Trump rants about Canada and how terribly Canadians treat him, they Buy Canadian that much more.