If you’re trying to boycott American products, opting to buy Canadian brands doesn’t guarantee that you’ve severed economic ties to the U.S.
The dumbest trade war in history has begun and it’s been heartening to see many Canadians eagerly answer Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s calls to shop local. The enthusiasm is palpable: online forums, such as Reddit’s Buy Canadian community, are brimming with pledges to cancel trips to Disney World, end digital subscriptions to Netflix and Amazon, and strike American products from grocery lists.
But “buying Canadian” is more complicated than it may seem. Supply chains in Canada and the U.S. are so enmeshed that it can be difficult to tell where “made in America” ends and “made in Canada” begins. So, if you’re planning to change the way you shop to support the country during these turbulent times, the devil is in the details.
Consider American Ketchup giant Kraft Heinz Co., which has been appearing on viral lists of U.S. products to avoid. Yes, Kraft Heinz is a quintessentially American company. The firm is co-headquartered in Chicago and Pittsburgh and its largest stakeholders are Wall Street top brass such as Berkshire Hathaway, Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street. But while Heinz, the brand, is unmistakably American, the stuff inside the bottle, in Canadian grocery stores at least, has been made in Canada for more than 100 years.
Heinz opened its first Canadian plant in Leamington, Ontario — the de facto Tomato capital of Canada — in 1909. It closed that plant in 2014, to the ire of many Canadians, leaving 740 employees out of a job. But the company resumed making its red sauce in Canada six years later, this time at its Mont Royal, Que. plant, which employs more than 1,000 people — a fact that the company recently printed on a full-page ad in the Globe and Mail.
Heinz ketchup, then, really is Canadian ketchup. It would be difficult to boycott the sauce without hurting Canadian tomato farmers.
However, when it comes to ketchup, there are still brands with deeper Canadian roots than Heinz. President’s Choice, for example, also makes the sauce with Canadian tomatoes, and its parent company, Loblaws, is headquartered in Brampton, Ont. Unlike Heinz, in other words, a lot more of the white-collar work that goes into selling President’s Choice ketchup happens in Canada, too, making it a slightly more patriotic condiment choice for the conscientious shopper.
Not every American brand, however, has a viable Canadian substitute. In those cases, buying American brands might be the best way for Canadian shoppers to support their own economy, however counterintuitive that may seem.
If you are in the market for a new car, for example, buying a Ford would be a patriotic choice, provided the car was manufactured at the company’s Oakville or Windsor, Ont. plants. It would certainly be a more pro-Canada choice than, say, a Nissan, which builds most of its North American cars in Tennessee, Mississippi and Mexico.
At the same time, if you’re looking to boycott American products, opting to buy Canadian brands hardly guarantees that you’ve severed economic ties to the U.S. Canadians may purchase orange juice from Quebec-based Oasis over Florida-based Tropicana, for instance, but in both cases, they’d be buying juice made from Florida oranges. One could likewise opt to purchase almond milk from Burnaby-based Earth’s Own over its American competitors, but you’d still be purchasing California almonds, albeit indirectly.
Canadians looking to adjust their buying behaviour in response to Trump’s tariff threats therefore need to be conscious of the complexity of supply chains. It would be foolish to boycott recognizably American brands, suchas Heinz or Ford, if their products are grown, packaged or assembled here — although in the case of ketchup, there might be better Canadian alternatives. Similarly, buying American oranges and almonds that were packaged in Canada doesn’t exactly hit Trump where it hurts; perhaps the conscientious shopper should avoid these products altogether.
Jonah Prousky is a freelance writer and management consultant based in Toronto. His work has appeared in the CBC, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, and Financial Post, among others.
