A pizzeria in Toronto has joined the ever growing number of Canadian institutions to stage boycotts of American products, following Donald Trump’s threats to put exorbitant tariffs on his neighbor to the north.
Graham Palmateer, owner of Gram’s Pizza, has done away completely with U.S. products, relying on homegrown ingredients or ones imported from Europe.
“I just decided I was done with the US. I wanted to move away from American companies,” he told The Guardian. “Canadians know Americans pretty well, and we don’t always agree with the choices that they make. A lot of us are disappointed, to put it mildly.”
On Thursday Trump doubled down on his deadline next Tuesday for imposing the 25 percent duties on more than $900 billion worth of annual imports from Canada and Mexico, citing insufficient progress in reducing fentanyl overdose deaths in the U.S.
Palmateer says he initially found it difficult to source certain items including Canadian diet soda, and other items including mushrooms and tomatoes were more expensive to source locally. He now uses a Quebec-based company to source pepperoni, and his flour is made with Ontario grain.
“On the pizza front, nothing will really change, except for the odd one-off topping that we sometimes source from down south,” he wrote on Instagram. “I do use California tomatoes in the shop, so I’ll be opting for just the Italian brands for a while, unless they also happen to choose fascism soon. It’s a bummer.
“But I’m voting with my dollar, if you will. I know, insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but I’ll sleep better.”
However, he says such changes have not had much of an impact on his costs. “By and large, I haven’t had to change pricing,” Palmateer told The Guardian. “If [the boycott] encourages someone else to also do the same thing and divest, that’s a good step.”
It comes after a recent poll by the Angus Reid Institute found that four in five Canadians have been buying more Canadian products since the president doubled down on his threats of tariffs.
Elsewhere, coffee shops across Canada have staged small protests of their own, renaming their Americanos as “Canadianos.” Despite most coffee shop owners wanting to remain apolitical, the trend of renaming the popular drink – made up of an espresso shot and water – has taken hold.
The “Canadiano” revolution began with a since-deleted Instagram post from British Columbia-based coffee company Kicking Horse Coffee, which urged shops to change the names of their drinks to something more patriotic.
Kicking Horse’s cafe menu lists a “Canadiano” and has done for 16 years, according to the company. “We’re officially making it a thing and asking coffee shops across the country to make the switch,” the post said, per The Washington Post.
