“It’s either friends forever or friends never, and I think the people of the U.S. are friends forever with Canada, but maybe not its leadership right now.”
Some American travellers at the Vancouver airport said Monday that they were in support of Canada’s proposed countermeasures in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s looming tariffs on Canadian products.
Patrick Dunigan and Sarah Grenfell were among a handful of visitors at the airport from cities in the blue state of California, which is led by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Hours before the announcement of a pause in U.S. tariffs, which had been set to start against Canada on Tuesday, they spoke to Postmedia News as a flurry of trade war news gripped the day’s headlines.
Dunigan and Grenfell were heading back to San Francisco after being in Vancouver for the third time in a few years.
“It’s hard to encapsulate how upset we are. It seems very dumb,” said Dunigan of Trump’s proposed tariffs.
They hadn’t yet seen the long and detailed list of products from the U.S. — from milk and meat to carpets and curtains — that is worth $155 billion that Canada was proposing to hit with 25 per cent retaliatory tariffs.
But Dunigan remarked: “It totally makes sense that you would retaliate or counter, I guess, is a more diplomatic term. I think you should all stand up and protect yourselves.”
Grenfell said she found the dynamics of the U.S. tariffs announced on Saturday and the Canadian counter-tariffs announced on Monday very unsettling as they were visiting close friends.
“We’ve been on vacation this whole weekend as the situation has been unfolding,” she said.
Other Americans at YVR were also trying to keep tabs on updates by news on their phones and dissecting the options with friends.
Asked if he was looking at the list of U.S. products that will be subject to Canadian tariffs, Herman Erlich of San Diego said the absurdity of the tensions had been the topic of conversations, both serious and in jest, all morning.
“Yes, very much. We have fixed the world this morning,” he joked. “Amen to Trudeau’s tariffs. I will not buy American wine on this trip.”
His longtime friend, Tim Soper from England, chimed in to add his moral support: “Speaking for Great Britain, we’re going to make the U.S.A. our 15th county.”
Erlich said that, in his mind, long-term relationships are what matter.
“It’s either friends forever or friends never, and I think the people of the U.S. are friends forever with Canada, but maybe not its leadership right now.”
Before midday Pacific Time, there was fresh news from Mexico that Trump had granted it a one-month delay in implementing tariffs in return for agreeing to work on border security. This tempered losses on the major North American stock indexes and added more speculation as to what might happen next for Canada.
A few hours later, after two phone calls with Trump, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that U.S. tariffs on Canada would also be paused for at least 30 days after Ottawa agreed to implement a $1.3-billion security plan for monitoring the border, appoint a “fentanyl czar” to combat organized crime and drug trafficking, and list drug cartels as terrorist entities.
With files from The Canadian Press
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