This is a situation where social media can actually be helpful for a change, allowing Canadians to organize and share information so we can better support Canadian businesses and support the government's tariff response. We could probably do with a thread assembling all the various ideas people have - lists like the one posted a couple pages back - to resist and mitigate the impact of the tariffs.
The obvious things to do when spending money day-to-day:
1. Buy Canadian products.
2. If a Canadian product isn't available, buy a non-USA-produced product.
3. If you can't do either of the first two, buy a blue-state produced product.
4. Wherever possible, buy from a Canadian-owned/operated business.
In addition to physical products, review subscription services (e.g. Netflix, Amazon, Sirius, WSJ) and cancel them. If you have the option of cancelling by phone, do that and tell the person you speak to flat out why you're doing it. If you must have a US streaming service (which will probably be most of us) then rotate through subscriptions rather than paying for 3-4 all at the same time.
Obviously, don't travel to or spend money in the USA to the extent you can avoid it.
If people or businesses in your community are impacted, consider what you can do to help them. If the tariffs end up devastating a particular region or industry and if you're in a position to do it, make donations to that region's food banks and other local charities so those most in need have additional support.
If you have friends, families, business contacts in the US - and if they're not Trump supporters - be kind and polite to them despite what their government is doing. As much as this is a political US/Canada battle, it's also an ideological one, and we want to keep our ideological allies in the States on our side to the extent we can.
These are all little things, but we need to get the ball rolling to not only sustain but actually build up Canadian businesses and capabilities in the long term. We're way behind in so many respects, but we can't do nothing, and we've got to start somewhere. And we should do many of these things even if the tariffs never actually come or are short lived.
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