Democrats point to Trump’s policies hurting American businesses

source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-united-states-tourism-boycott-9.7012575

The drop in Canadian tourism to the United States in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s actions is hurting American businesses in several states, a new report by a congressional committee has found.

The report, prepared by the Democrat minority of the U.S. Congress’s joint economic committee, warns that states along the Canada-U.S. border are being hit hard.

“In 2024, Canadian tourism contributed $20.5 billion to the U.S. economy and supported 140,000 American jobs,” wrote the authors of the report. “The negative impacts of President Trump’s tariff policies have been particularly stark in states along the U.S.-Canada border, which have many businesses that rely on short-term visits by Canadians.”

The report also cites Trump’s comments about annexing Canada, rounds of tariffs on Canadian goods and his decision to repeatedly break off trade talks.

“This has disrupted diplomatic, economic and trade relations between the United States and Canada — which in turn has hurt U.S. businesses that depend on visitors from Canada,” it says.

The report says the number of passenger vehicles crossing the border between January and October dropped by nearly 20 per cent compared with 2024, with declines ranging from more than 10 per cent in Alaska to more than 28 per cent in Vermont.

“Businesses throughout the region are also reporting fewer tourists, more vacancies and lower sales,” says the report.

The joint economic committee, set up in 1946 to study economic policy, is composed of both senators and members of the House of Representatives. It includes both Republicans and Democrats, with each side regularly publishing reports that don’t include the other.

The committee’s reports inform members of both the Senate and the House of Representatives on economic questions.

Sen. Maggie Hassan, ranking member of the committee and a Democrat from New Hampshire, said the report documents the impact of Trump’s actions.

“Going back for generations, Canadians have visited New Hampshire and many other states along the U.S.-Canada border to see family or friends, stay in our hotels, share a meal at our restaurants and shop at our stores,” Hassan said in a statement.

“However, in the wake of President Trump’s reckless tariffs and needless provocations, fewer and fewer Canadians are making trips to the United States, putting many American businesses in jeopardy and straining the close ties that bind our two nations.”

Hassan was also part of a four-senator delegation that travelled to Ottawa in July where they met with Prime Minister Mark Carney and several Canadian cabinet ministers to discuss ways to repair relations between the two countries.

The committee’s eight-page report, made public Wednesday, outlines the toll that the Canadian boycott of travel to the U.S. has taken on 11 U.S. border states, with state-by-state data and testimonials from a wide variety of business owners.

For example, in Hassan’s home state of New Hampshire, officials reported a 30 per cent decrease in Canadian visitors — and reservations for state-run campgrounds were down 71 per cent in the first five months of 2025. One hotel owner in North Conway reported 30 per cent of their rooms were empty during some summer weekends that usually sell out.

• Cross Country Checkup is asking: Are you gathering with American friends or family over the holidays? How are the Canada-U.S. relationships in your life going? Leave your comment here and we may read it or call you back for our show this Sunday.

Kyle Daley, owner of Soloman’s Store in West Stewartstown, N.H., told the committee that the “usual parade of vacationers heading to Old Orchard Beach simply didn’t show up this year.”

“The friction at the border is no longer just a headline; it is an empty parking lot and a threat to our livelihood,” Daley said.

In Maine, border crossings by passenger vehicles from Canada were down around 25 per cent in the first 10 months and Maine’s CAT Ferry, which connects Bar Harbor and Nova Scotia, reported its business was down 20 per cent over the summer.

“It’s like a 50 per cent [drop off] because not too many Canadians.… The worst year we’ve had. We’ve never had a year like that, even worse than COVID.”

In Montana, Canadians accounted for nearly 80 per cent of international visitors in 2024 and contributed $170 million US to the state’s economy. In 2025, border crossings were down 19 per cent in the first 10 months of the year. A Montana hotel reported a $38,000 US loss after a Canadian sports team cancelled its reservation which included 70 rooms and a 200-person dinner.

In an interview Friday with CBC News, Diane Medler, executive director of Discover Kalispell in Montana, said in the spring businesses noticed a 25 per cent decrease in Canadian travel and a 44 per cent drop in Canadian credit card spending compared with 2024.

She said by September the situation had improved a bit, with the drop in Canadian credit card spending down to 39 percent.

Medler said Kalispell has launched a Canadian Welcome Pass with discounts for Canadian visitors.

‘Long-lasting damage’

In Washington state, the number of passenger vehicles crossing the border was down 24 per cent and cities like Spokane reported a 33 per cent drop in visitors. Ridership on the Clipper Navigation ferry service between Vancouver Island and Seattle was down 30 per cent, forcing the company to lay off a quarter of its workforce.

Businesses in New York also reported cutting employees. For example, the North Country Chamber of Commerce, which serves the northern part of the state, reported in June that 83 per cent of businesses in the area had noticed a drop in Canadian customers, leading 35 per cent to cut staffing.

“Seventy per cent of businesses blamed the political climate and tariff policies for this drastic decrease,” says the report.

Some business owners, like Christa Bowdish of the Old Stagecoach Inn in Vermont, who was forced to lay off employees and reduce hours, told the committee she feared the damage will be lasting as Canadians find other destinations.

“It’s not just the tariffs,” she said in the report. “This is long-lasting damage to a relationship and emotional damage takes time to heal.”

www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/climate/plastic-paper-shopping-bags.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Climate%20and%20Environment

By Brad Plumer

March 29, 2019

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WASHINGTON — The decision by New York State to ban single-use plastic bags from retail stores makes it a good time to revisit everyone’s favorite environmental quandary: paper or plastic?

Unfortunately, there’s not a simple answer on whether paper or plastic bags are better for the environment. They both have downsides, but there are a few broad lessons to keep in mind when you’re hitting the grocery store.

Plastic bags, which often take centuries to decompose, can create a dreadful waste problem even though they’re far from the largest source of plastic waste in America — about 12 percent of the total.

On the other hand, paper bags typically require more energy and greenhouse gas emissions to produce, which isn’t great from a global warming standpoint.

Reusable bags can be a decent compromise, provided you hold onto them and use them often. Ultimately, though, what you put inside the bag, particularly your food choices, will most likely matter a lot more for the environment than what type of bag you use.

The trouble with plastic bags: litter

American shoppers use more than 100 billion lightweight polyethylene plastic bags each year, and only a small portion are ever recycled. Most recycling centers can’t deal with them — they just clog up the machinery — and so the majority of plastic bags end up in landfills, where they can take up to 1,000 years to degrade.

To be fair, a plastic bag doesn’t cause too much harm sitting in a landfill. The bigger problem arises when people don’t dispose of their bags properly, and the plastic ends up fluttering around in the wild, clogging up waterways and threatening wildlife.

San Jose, Calif., for instance, found that plastic bags made up about 12 percent of the litter in its creeks before implementing a local bag ban in 2012. And, just last week, a dead sperm whale washed ashore in Indonesia with two dozen plastic bags in its gut, along with other trash.

So, even though plastic bags are only a small fraction of America’s overall plastic trash, they’ve become a highly visible sign of waste.

Workers removing plastic bags from clogged rollers at a recycling plant in Westborough, Mass.CreditCharles Krupa/Associated Press

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Workers removing plastic bags from clogged rollers at a recycling plant in Westborough, Mass.CreditCharles Krupa/Associated Press

The trouble with paper bags: carbon emissions

So does that mean paper bags, which degrade more easily, are a better option? Not necessarily. Climate change has become the biggest environmental issue of our time, so it’s worth looking at things from an emissions standpoint. And on that score, paper bags fare worse.

Even though paper bags are made from trees, which are, in theory, a renewable resource, it takes significantly more energy to create pulp and manufacture a paper bag than it does to make a single-use plastic bag from oil.

Back in 2011, Britain’s Environment Agency conducted a life-cycle assessment of various bag options, looking at every step of the production process. The conclusion? You’d have to reuse a paper bag at least three times before its environmental impact equaled that of a high-density polyethylene plastic bag used only once. And if plastic bags were reused repeatedly, they looked even better.

Paper bags can more easily be recycled or even composted, but the British study found that even these actions didn’t make a huge difference in the broader analysis. Unless you’re reusing your paper bags a lot, they look like a poorer option from a global warming standpoint.

Reusable bags are a decent option — if you actually reuse them

That same British analysis also looked into reusable options, like heavier, more durable plastic bags or cotton bags. And it found that these are only sustainable options if you use them very frequently.

Making a cotton shopping bag is hardly cost-free. Growing cotton requires a fair bit of energy, land, fertilizer and pesticides, which can have all sorts of environmental effects — from greenhouse gas emissions to nitrogen pollution in waterways.

The study found that an avid shopper would have to reuse his or her cotton bag 131 times before it had a smaller global warming impact than a lightweight plastic bag used only once. And, depending on the make, more durable plastic bags would have to be used at least 4 to 11 times before they made up for their heftier upfront climate costs.

So if you’re going to opt for a reusable bag for environmental reasons, make sure you actually reuse it — often.

CreditDavid McNew/Getty Images

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CreditDavid McNew/Getty Images

What’s in the bag most likely matters more than the bag itself

It never hurts to think about bag choices. But keep in mind that if you’re going to the grocery store, the food you purchase and place in that bag probably has a vastly bigger effect on the environment than whatever you use to haul it home.

Our global food system, after all, is responsible for one-quarter of humanity’s planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions — with meat and dairy having a disproportionately large impact. By contrast, packaging makes up only about 5 percent of the food system’s footprint. Compared with, say, the effects of clearing away vast swaths of forest to grow feed or raise livestock, our bags are a much smaller deal.

Put another way, a pound of beef bought at the supermarket will have roughly 25 times the global warming impact as the disposable plastic bag it’s carried in. So if you’re looking for ways to slim down your personal carbon footprint, taking a closer look at your dietary choices isn’t a bad place to start.

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