JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The will he or won't he of President Donald Trump's tariff threats has been a whirlwind. The new deadline for Mexico and Canada is March 4. On the United States' northern border many Americans and Canadians live side-by-side and are linked socially and economically. North Country Public Radio's Amy Feiereisel visited two border communities to hear how residents are thinking about a potential trade war.
AMY FEIEREISEL, BYLINE: I start the day in Massena, a rural town of 12,000 on the northern edge of New York state.
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FRANCIS RENAUD: At the Dollar Tree, I overhear a bearded cashier talking to two silver-haired women. It's about tariffs.
RENAUD: I believe it's a lose-lose situation for both the Canadian and the American people.
FEIEREISEL: Francis Renaud is here shopping for the day with a friend. They're both Canadian and live in Cornwall, just a 15-minute drive and a border crossing away. Massena and Cornwall have been neighbors for centuries. She says tariffs go against the way of life here.
RENAUD: The friendliness, the getting together, the helping, assisting with each other is twofold.
FEIEREISEL: The American cashier, Howard Jessmer, says he thinks the tariffs are just a negotiating tool.
HOWARD JESSMER: I'm thinking that it's more of a ploy.
FEIEREISEL: He says, this is Trump's way of getting Canada to do more about the border.
JESSMER: Helping with guarding the border so it's just not all on the U.S.'s side to try and cover it.
FEIEREISEL: People are polite but tense. I feel this unease all day. Most people really don't want to talk to me or about tariffs or Trump. Massena used to be a big factory town. When companies left or downsized, so did jobs and people. Lifelong resident Steve Netto says he's against tariffs in general because it's just another tax that nobody can afford.
STEVE NETTO: The people who have the tariffs imposed on them are just going to pass the costs on to the consumer. and everything's expensive enough already, you know? And we do a lot of business with Canada.
FEIEREISEL: Netto is one of the owners of Trombino's, an Italian restaurant in Massena. He estimates about 10% of his customers are Canadian. He says, for him, the northern border doesn't feel like this huge problem.
NETTO: It's been fairly quiet recently. So...
FEIEREISEL: So, like, you're not feeling like the northern border is under attack?
NETTO: No. I never felt that way.
FEIEREISEL: But there is a lot of uncertainty about what happens next.
ANTHONY VISKAVITCH: Yeah, I mean, I'm already getting questions from customers about this, believe it or not.
FEIEREISEL: Anthony Viskavitch runs a car dealership in Massena that his grandfather started. A lot of his cars and parts come from abroad.
VISKAVITCH: And I'm telling people every - the same answer. It's like, you know, I don't have the answers.
FEIEREISEL: A trade war is scary. People are frustrated with politics and government. They use words like circus, show, theater. But sentiment continued in Canada. I drove to Cornwall, also a former industry town, but a lot bigger than Massena - 50,000 people, with a lot more business. In the food court of Cornwall's indoor mall, I meet Sally Strata. She says a lot of people are riled up, including her own mother.
SALLY STRATA: My mother's a senior, so she's terrified - like, terrified. And I'm like, Mom, stop watching the news. You're going to have a heart attack.
FEIEREISEL: She thinks it's all posturing, that Trump's playing the big, tough negotiator, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is playing Canada's savior.
STRATA: Then to go on record and saying, oh, well, we're going to fight against the big, bad U.S. and the big, bad Trump.
FEIEREISEL: She says she doesn't think Trump's ask for more border security is crazy. She says she wishes her own government was tougher on crime. She's also not worried about the tariffs actually happening. But other people are. Troy Vaillancourt owns a real estate brokerage in Cornwall. He says some Canadians are already trying to buy more locally. He's rethought his own travel plans.
TROY VAILLANCOURT: We're supposed to go to Florida in April, for instance, and we're questioning whether we should be doing that.
FEIEREISEL: He says that feels strange because Canada has always been a friend to the U.S. and vice versa. That's a connection pretty much everyone I spoke with wanted to maintain, including the mayors of Cornwall and Massena. They met earlier this week to brainstorm how their two communities would weather potential tariffs together. But for now, everyone here is stuck in this strange sort of limbo. For NPR News, I'm Amy Feiereisel, on the U.S.-Canadian border. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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