BELLINGHAM — Canadians unhappy with President Donald Trump’s tariffs and hot talk aren’t just booing American teams.

They’re spending less at Washington’s border-town businesses, judging by reports from communities like Bellingham that rely heavily on Canadian shoppers and guests.

Substantially fewer Canadians are crossing into Washington, according to border data. They’re showing up less frequently at stores, restaurants and hotels.

And despite a national reputation for polite deference and profuse apologizing, many Canadians are being unusually direct about why they’re staying home.

“We believe with the current political climate and the negativity toward our country that it would not be beneficial to support your area financially,” explained a member of a 14-person bachelorette party that recently canceled its four-night stay at a Hilton-branded hotel near Bellingham International Airport, according to an email received by Regional Manager Sara Holliday.

She says her two Hilton properties, both near the airport, count on Canadians for up to 40% of their business, depending on the time of year.

Similarly emphatic emails and calls have poured into other businesses and the local visitors’ bureau. Even Bellingham Mayor Kim Lund said she has been “on the receiving end of some pointed communication” from canceling Canadians.

“Canadians are kind of pissed,” says glass artist Gordon Anderson, whose kiosk at Bellingham’s Bellis Fair mall usually gets around 30% of sales from Canadians. Anderson, who runs the business with his wife, Christine, said sales have dropped in the past month.

That’s all raising red flags for a regional economy still feeling the effects of the year-and-a-half border shutdown during the pandemic.

Before COVID-19, Canadian shoppers spent around $140 million a year in Whatcom County and accounted for nearly an eighth of taxable retail sales, according to a 2020 report by the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University.

That Canadian-fueled prosperity is already taking a hit.

Hotel occupancy across the region was down 11% to 14% in January compared with 2024, according to the trade group Visit Bellingham.

Canadian bookings at Holliday’s two Hilton properties are down around 25% since the start of the year, she said.

If those trends continue, “it’s going to massively impact us down here,” Holliday said. “We’re a border town.”

These are, admittedly, early days in the cross-border dustup.

The 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico imposed by President Donald Trump are due to go into effect on Tuesday.

Canadians, meanwhile, have fired back with boycotts of American goods.

British Columbia briefly banned sales of liquor from Republican-controlled “red” states and last week, B.C. Premier David Eby again urged Canadians to forgo travel to the U.S. “until this is resolved,” according to media reports.

They’ve also booed during the U.S. national anthem when Canadians have hosted U.S. basketball and hockey teams, including the 4 Nations Face-Off game Feb. 15.

But so far, the economic fallout is substantial, judging from available data and anecdotal accounts.

Start at the border.

During February, which covered Trump’s tariffs and intensified annexation talk, the number of Canadian-licensed passenger vehicles crossing into Washington dropped 29% compared with February 2024, according to B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Transit data via the Cascade Gateway border dashboard.

Granted, border crossings ebb and flow for nonpolitical reasons, like weather and especially the value of the Canadian dollar, which is down around 6.6% against the U.S. dollar since a recent peak in August.

But southbound crossings from August through December varied by only a few percentage points month to month and actually surged in January before falling off a cliff in February.

And while it’s impossible to blame that plunge entirely on politics, the timing is telling, says Laurie Trautman, director of the Border Policy Research Institute.

The decline starts “right about that time that the tariff talk was really coming into effect,” said Trautman. “I really think it’s the anti-American push that we’re seeing in Canada.”

That also comes through in other, less formal measures.

None of the big retailers that tend to draw Canadian shoppers — Costco, Trader Joe’s and Ross Dress for Less — would disclose sales figures or even respond to questions about Canadian shoppers.

But a visit last week found only a smattering of Canadian vehicles in those retailers’ parking lots, well below numbers reported in surveys by the Border Policy Research Institute in 2016 and 2019.

At Costco and Trader Joe’s, where cars with Canadian license plates typically account for 36% and 23%, respectively, of all vehicles, there were fewer than 10% last week.

Some Canadians who did make the trip seemed unfazed by the border skirmish.

“It won’t make a big difference for me, whoever is in the White House,” said Vancouver resident Yale Stoochnow, who shops in Bellingham every few weeks, as she headed into Costco on a Wednesday afternoon.

Other Canadians seemed ashamed about their presence in what some of their countrymen now regard as enemy territory.

“I feel kind of guilty about it,” said Abbotsford-area resident Josh — he declined to share his last name — who was also at Costco.

“I didn’t tell any of my friends I was coming,” said Vancouver resident Dawn MacKenzie, who was shopping with her mother, Wendy, at Trader Joe’s.

The MacKenzie women were quick to say they don’t blame regular Washingtonians for politics coming out of the other Washington.

But politics matter. Although U.S. goods like milk, olive oil and gasoline are cheaper south of the border, the MacKenzies said this would be their last trip until tariffs are resolved and Trump stops referring to Canada as “the 51st state” and to the nation’s prime minister as “Governor” Trudeau.

“That was not good to hear,” said Wendy MacKenzie.

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This isn’t just a problem for Bellingham and Whatcom County.

In the Seattle area, which took in $556 million from nearly 1.7 million Canadians in 2023, according to trade group Visit Seattle, some hospitality businesses are also seeing softer Canadian business.

At the Hotel Ändra Seattle-MGallery, Canadian bookings through Expedia through May 14 are down 10% over last year, while visits to the hotel’s Expedia page are down 15%, said owner Craig Schafer. By contrast, Expedia bookings and views from every other country are either up or the same.

“It’s super frustrating,” said Schafer, who thinks Canadians are turned off less by Trump’s tariffs than his bombast about annexing Canada. “It isn’t like Congress said it … or the voters said it; it was one person.”

Washington’s economic reliance on Canada goes far beyond vacations and Costco.

Canada is the state’s largest trade partner, annually purchasing nearly $10 billion in goods from the Evergreen State, including from many smaller manufacturers who are an important source of employment.

Many Canadian companies have offices and manufacturing centers in Washington, which also generate tax revenue and jobs.

All of that has been affected by uncertainty over U.S.-Canadian trade relations.

“Even a 5%-to-10% downturn in manufacturing for export into Canada can have an impact on jobs and job security,” said Greg Hansen, mayor of Ferndale, which has several manufacturers who “count on being able to ship north.”

“So it goes beyond just what you can perceive in terms of license plates in the parking lot,” added Lund, Bellingham’s mayor.

But it’s the consumer economy where the current standoff has been most visible, especially on or near the border, where the Canadian presence is larger in both relative and absolute terms.

More than half the passengers flying out of Bellingham International Airport are Canadians, taking advantage of cheaper airfares, according to the Port of Bellingham, despite Southwest Airlines ending its Bellingham service last year.

Just before the pandemic, Canadians accounted for more than 40% of general merchandise and clothing purchases in Whatcom County, and nearly three-quarters of gasoline purchases in Blaine, according to institute estimates.

Canadians even affect where and how businesses put their stores.

Reportedly, it was partly because of Canadian shoppers that Costco moved from its former location to a larger facility right off Interstate 5, with an extra-large dairy section to handle Canadians’ massive appetite for milk.

Likewise, Trader Joe’s will open a second Bellingham location, one of just 12 new stores nationally in 2025, in the city’s north end, reportedly to capture that Canadian traffic. “We joke that it will be the Canadian Trader Joe’s,” says Lund.

But that Canadian market is double-edged.

When the Canadian dollar plunged, starting around 2011, so did border crossings and Canadian spending. And during the pandemic, border economies took a huge hit.

Whatcom County visitor spending didn’t return to 2019 levels until 2022, according to Visit Bellingham CEO Dylan Deane-Boyle. Southbound border crossings by Canadians in 2024 were still well below pre-COVID levels.

Worse, this time around, border-dependent communities could see a drop in Canadian sales and taxes while also facing another Trump fallout: cuts in federal funding.

In Bellingham, Lund said, that could jeopardize key infrastructure projects and dozens of city staff positions.

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What comes next is anyone’s guess. Trump said Monday that the tariffs would go into effect Tuesday.

Canadians appear ready to respond in kind, with a renewed push for boycotts of American goods.

Some political and business leaders in Washington seem resigned to at least a few months of rough going and even rougher rhetoric.

By contrast, the mood on the street — or, more precisely, in the parking lot — feels less about national tensions than about everyday annoyance over yet another problem that has local impacts but is entirely out of local hands.

That’s the view of Arif, a British Columbia resident who was loading up his car after a trip to Costco. He won’t consider changing his shopping patterns until U.S. and Canadian leaders have had more time to resolve what is a complicated economic dispute. “It’s too early,” he said. “Let’s see what happens.”

Others, like Brad Averill, a Bellingham-area resident, are a little mystified Canadians are taking American politics personally. “It’s our politics,” said Averill, who was at Costco with his wife, Amanda. “We don’t let their politics affect us.”

In the meantime, Averill isn’t entirely unhappy to see fewer Canadians crowding Bellingham’s stores or filling stations.

“You pull up … behind a Canadian and he opens his trunk and pulls out, like, eight 5-gallon gas tanks,” Averill said. “And he fills his car up, then fills up (the) gas tanks, and you’re sitting there, like, ‘I get it, but come on, bud.’ ”

Some complain about Canadians’ driving habits. Others say some Canadian shoppers remove the packaging of new purchases after they leave an American store, sometimes tossing trash in the parking lots, to avoid paying duty on “new” goods when they return to Canada.

Holliday, the Bellingham hotel manager, thinks those reported downsides are exaggerated — and in any case, are a small price to pay for the dollars Canadians also leave behind.

“I’ll pick up garbage all day long for the amount of business that Canadians bring us,” Holliday said. “Just high-five them and see you next week.”

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