Canada Steadfast in Avoiding Travel to U.S., Buying More Domestic Goods: Central Bank Research

By Paul Vieira

OTTAWA--Anger over President Trump's trade policy has fueled a notable increase in Canadian spending on domestic products and local tourism, according to research from the Bank of Canada.

The central bank's analysis, published Thursday, also suggests that momentum behind buying Canadian remains solid with no sign of ebbing.

"Should Canadian consumers continue to prefer domestic products over U.S. goods and services, this spending shift could not only affect the composition of Canada's gross domestic product but also have an impact on inflationary pressures," the report said. The research was conducted by the central bank's analysts and produced independently from the Bank of Canada's governing council, which decides on rate policy.

Trump's protectionist trade policy, along with musings from Trump about using economic force to annex Canada as a 51st state, triggered a Buy Canadian movement in the country. People vowed not to travel to the U.S., and Statistics Canada data bear this out. Grocers continue to prominently mark certain products in aisles as made-in-Canada.

Overall, trade-policy uncertainty has cast a pall over the Canadian economy, as companies curb investment plans and hiring until the future of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade treaty, or USMCA, is settled. Senior Bank of Canada officials have called the pending U.S.-led review of USMCA later this year as an important risk to the economic outlook.

Statistics Canada data earlier this week indicated trips by Canadians to the U.S. fell by 25% in 2025 -- or the largest year-over-year decline ever recorded excluding the Covid-19 pandemic period. The Bank of Canada report indicates that Canadians, instead, took 4% more trips domestically between the first and third quarters of last year, and spent 10% more on travel and tourism during that same timeframe.

As for the purchasing of goods, the Bank of Canada analysts used detailed, transaction-level data from NielsenIQ. The data indicate that since March, 2025, households have shifted food spending away from U.S. products and toward Canadian ones. "The shift is modest but clearly visible," the report said. The central bank said the shift was more pronounced in categories such as coffee and fruit juice.

"Outside of food, where Canadian substitutes are often harder to find, we see no comparable shift in spending patterns," the central bank research said. The report added that retaliatory tariffs imposed by Canada on certain goods might have also prompted a shift away from U.S. products -- although Prime Minister Mark Carney dropped most of those duties in late August.

Most Canadian exports arriving in the U.S. are free of tariffs, because they comply with the terms under USMCA. The White House also provided an exemption for Canada and Mexico from Trump's new global tariff of 15%, revealed about a week ago after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling invalidating his original levies. It's unclear whether that exemption will remain as part of the U.S. review of USMCA.

Write to Paul Vieira at paul.vieira@wsj.com

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February 26, 2026 13:08 ET (18:08 GMT)