Angry at Trump’s Threats, Canadians Walk Away From Many U.S. Brands

President Harry Truman said "Canada and the United States have reached the point where we no longer think of each other as 'foreign' countries. We think of each other as friends, as peaceful and cooperative neighbors." President Trump seems to agree on the first point, but presumably not on the second and third.

Not only has Trump repeatedly said Canada should become the United States of America’s “51st state,” but one of his earliest moves in office in January 2025 was to threaten to impose 25% tariffs on Canadian imports due to a perceived lack of cooperation on immigration and drug trafficking along the 5,000 mile U.S.-Canada border. Trump has also decried the U.S. trade deficit with Canada, with whom it has a highly integrated market. 

Canadians are upset and calling for boycotts of U.S. brands

The United States’ perennially polite neighbors to the north are miffed. Trump had previously floated the idea of a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada, so Canadians showed some trepidation upon Trump’s victory. Net favorability of the United States among Canadian adults dropped around 10 points in the days immediately following Trump’s election victory. It then remained stable through the period before Trump took office on Jan. 19, with Canadians taking a wait-and-see approach. But on Jan. 21, Trump said he would in fact follow through on his earlier tariff threats. We have since seen Canadian favorability of the United States fall off a proverbial cliff. 

Canadians have been finding ways to express their displeasure: They have booed “The Star Spangled Banner” at sporting events and some have have forestalled travel plans to the United States. 

Others have urged their compatriots to “Buy Canadian” and boycott U.S. goods. Canada has the 9th largest economy in the world, with around 41 million consumers and a GDP per capita on the level of Sweden or the Netherlands. While a great deal smaller on all these metrics than the United States, boycotts of U.S. consumer goods can hurt the brands on the receiving end. 

How Morning Consult’s “country affinity” metric can tell us which U.S. brands are most exposed

Much like during the recent Middle East boycotts, many of the U.S. brands immediately on the receiving end are those that are present in the average consumer’s life — fast food chains, retail giants, and food and beverage companies — and those closely associated in consumers’ minds with the United States. 

On that last point, Morning Consult has previously conducted global research to quantify the degree to which consumers’ views of a brand are more or less closely affiliated with views of the brand’s country of origin (for example, the degree to which views of U.S. brands are affected by overseas consumers’ views of the United States). We have also systematically shown how that metric — which we call “country affinity” — can matter during a crisis, like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict in the Middle East, and help predict damage to a brand in the market in question. For more information on the methodology and findings, see the supporting white paper. More recently, we used updated data to show that food and beverage brands — both consumer packaged food and quick service restaurants — are at particular risk. 

A number of U.S. consumer brands in Canada have seen declines in purchasing consideration

Amid the ongoing U.S.-Canada tensions, Morning Consult tracks 298 brands in Canada, of which 75 were in the consumer packaged goods, retail, and fast food space, and were tracked from October 2024 to February 2025. The list of the included brands can be found in the methodology statement below. (Note that we did not include digital or social media brands like Google or Facebook in this analysis despite their typically high country affinity. Since many of their services are free to consumers on an advertising model, purchasing consideration is a less meaningful metric.) 

To see whether worsening bilateral relations are taking a toll on U.S. brands’ likely earnings, we looked at changes in net purchasing consideration among Canadian adults between the second week of January and the second week of February (bookending the tariff threat), and found that 52 U.S. brands — almost 70% of the total brands we examined — saw a decline, with 7 brands seeing declines of over 10 points. No brand saw an increase over 10 percentage points. And it is crucial to note that 30% of the brands saw no change or slight increases in purchasing consideration. Brands’ all-important idiosyncratic qualities like price, quality, ongoing advertising campaigns and other factors primarily drive purchasing consideration, and we did not control for any of those variables here. 

However, looking at the timing in the decline of purchasing consideration after months of stability for many of these brands makes a compelling case for the influence of U.S.-Canada relations on purchasing consideration in recent months, to the potential detriment of U.S. companies. 

The 25% tariffs were paused until March 4 to allow for further assessment, and Canada has made performative concessions on border security in the meantime. But the tariff threat is far from over. President Trump also reiterated as recently as Feb. 10 his conviction that Canada should be the 51st state, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was caught on a hot mic saying Trump was “serious” about his threats. All of this makes a swift mending of fences unlikely. 

How should U.S. companies caught in the crossfire manage around these dynamics?

Ironically, the U.S. and Canadian economies are so intertwined that some Canadian boycotts could end up hurting Canadians as much as the companies they are targeting. For example, many fast food restaurants tend to use a franchise model in which Canadians are the local owners, and many consumer brands viewed as “American” may be produced at least partly in Canada or have major Canadian subsidiaries. Emphasizing these types of ties to Canada is a critical part of any communication strategy for consumer-facing brands in Canada right now, and could motivate consumers to think twice before engaging in boycotts.

Our experience also shows that brands that are not based in the United States can sometimes be mistaken for U.S. brands (Spotify and Ikea anyone?). Brands in such a position should consider emphasizing their true country of origin in consumer-facing marketing so long as the Trump effect shows no signs of abating.

Beyond that, it’s worth recalling two findings from our above analysis: 30% of the U.S. brands we track in Canada saw no decline in purchasing consideration, and only 10% of them saw a 10-point decline. While the latter decline is non-trivial, it suggests that many companies have room to leverage other messaging strategies — such as those around product pricing and quality — to potentially offset risks arising from worsening views of America. Many brands may not be readily associated with the United States (i.e. many have low country affinity) which is benefitting them in this instance. We advise all companies to get a messaging gameplan in place should the situation on the Northern border turn from bad to worse. 

For general recommendations around positioning your brand relative to country of origin, see our Country Affinity Playbook.