| schema:text
| - On Feb. 3, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a 30-day pause for the tariffs. In response, Canadian leaders said they would pause retaliatory actions as long as the tariffs were not in effect.
On Feb. 1, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump announced he was issuing a 25% tariff on goods imported from Canada and Mexico and a 10% tariff on goods imported from China. The tariff was scheduled to go into effect three days later, on Feb. 4. In response, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his country would retaliate.
Posts made the following day on social media alleged that Canadian liquor stores were taking matters into their own hands by pulling American-made alcohol from shelves and putting up signs urging consumers to buy Canadian-made products. Various news outlets also reported that the leaders of several Canadian provinces ordered their liquor stores to stop selling American-made alcohol. Snopes readers wrote in asking whether the claim was true.
"Buy Canadian Instead" signs going up in BC Liquor stores
byu/Miserable-Lizard inpics
The distribution of alcohol in Canada is handled through province-level agencies, like Ontario's LCBO or Quebec's SAQ. Of Canada's 10 provinces and three territories, only Alberta, Nunavut and Saskatchewan had not made any public announcement suggesting they would pull U.S.-produced alcohol from shelves. The claim was mostly true, since many, but not all, Canadian provinces and territories announced they would pull liquor from shelves.
However, the restriction might be a moot point. On Feb. 3, one day before the tariffs were to go into effect, Trudeau and Trump announced they had come to a deal that would pause the tariffs for 30 days. At least one Canadian premier, Ontario's Doug Ford, said he would pause retaliatory measures as long as U.S. tariffs were not in effect.
For posterity's sake (and in case take effect after the pause), here's what the premier of each Canadian province or territory planned to do in retaliation:
In Ontario, Canada's most populous province, Ford announced he was ordering LCBO to "remove American products from shelves."
In Quebec, Finance Minister Eric Girard and Premier Francois Legault ordered SAQ to pull American products from shelves by Feb. 4.
British Columbia Premier David Eby announced similar guidelines for the BC Liquor Distribution Branch and publicly called for Canadians to boycott American products:
Two of the three prairie provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan, had not announced any plans to pull liquor from shelves. The premier of the third, Manitoba's Wab Kinew, announced plans to pull U.S. products at Manitoba liquor marts and called the tariffs "an attack on Canadians" in a news release.
In the maritime provinces, the premiers of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island issued statements announcing the freeze on U.S.-produced alcohol on their government websites, while New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt posted hers to X.
The website of the Newfoundland Labrador Liquor Store featured a banner reading "By Tuesday, February 4, all products produced in the U.S. will be removed from liquor store and liquor express locations across the province until further notice."
In the north, Yukon Premier Ranj Pillai released a statement announcing the territory was pulling U.S.-produced liquor from stores, and Northwest Territories Premier R.J. Simpson said he was "reviewing our procurement policies to eliminate purchases from U.S. companies where possible and halting the Northwest Territories Liquor and Cannabis Commission's purchase of American goods."
The premier of Nunavut, P.J. Akeeagok, released a statement on Facebook criticizing the tariffs but did not announce plans to pull U.S. liquor from shelves.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)