Alaska business owner Mike Healy has one word to describe the international trade war that began on Tuesday between the U.S. and Canada.
“Chaos,” he said.
“I’ve been talking to people around town and in the office and everyone seems to have a different version of what’s going to happen.”
Healy, who owns the Skagway Brewing Company in Skagway, Alaska, is one of many people in his town who are worried about what punishing new tariffs will mean for his business, and his community.
The only road to the small coastal town of about 1,200 people is through the Yukon and B.C., and many residents and businesses rely on Whitehorse — a two-hour drive away — as a shopping, supply and travel hub.
Healy said he typically makes a trip to Whitehorse every two weeks or so, often spending hundreds of dollars each time on groceries and hundreds more on business supplies, including CO2 and nitrogen needed for his brewery. He’s afraid that may all change now.
“It just doesn’t seem like we’ve gotten very good, straight information on what to expect when we try to come back through the border,” he said.
Healy said he’s already had to make some tough decisions, such as pausing plans to expand his business and to construct some new housing.
“You know, I see our cost of lumber going up due to these tariffs. I see steel going up, increasing because of these tariffs. So we’re just stopping, we’re just halting,” he said.
“And it’s a shame because Skagway needs a lot more housing.”
Nina Seizov, who owns Skagway Mercantile, a gift shop in town, is also anxious about how the trade war might affect her life and livelihood. She called the tariffs “horrible,” saying she “can’t imagine how this is gonna work.”
Like Healy, she makes regular trips to Whitehorse to stock up on things that are often more expensive back in remote Skagway.
“We have really high shipping amounts. So the cost of inventory, the cost of everything, is a little bit higher in Skagway. And then if you’re going to add on this tariff, we just don’t know if this stuff will sell at that price,” she said.
Seizov is grateful that she and her partner recently built a manufactured home in Skagway that they bought through a Whitehorse supplier. She’s not sure whether they would have been able to do that if the new tariffs were already in place.
Seizov says she also typically sells many Canadian goods, including Indigenous-made products, in her gift shop but she’s unsure whether that will now be more difficult with the added cost of tariffs.
‘The citizens bear the brunt of this cost’
In a recent letter sent to Alaska’s state congressman and senators — all Republicans — on behalf of Skagway’s municipal government, Mayor Sam Bass expressed concern about how a trade war “may impact life and safety in our community.”
He said people in Skagway depend on Whitehorse for goods and services — and also emergency services at times.
“Thus, our good relationship with our Canadian neighbors is essential to saving lives,” he wrote.
“The proposed 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian goods and the potential Canadian response could result in a crushing increase in the cost of living in our remote community, causing negative impacts to nearly every facet of our community,” he wrote in the letter, sent before the tariffs came into effect on Tuesday.
Speaking to CBC News on Tuesday, Orion Hanson, a member of the local assembly, said he had a “tremendous amount of concern” about the potential increased cost of living in Skagway and whether it will become just too hard for people to stay there.
“I don’t see any benefit from this whole plan, this whole scheme. I think only the citizens bear the brunt of this cost. I don’t see how the common person gets anything out of it,” he said, about the tariffs.
Hanson is also concerned about what it might mean for the traditionally close, neighbourly relations between Skagway and the Yukon. A prolonged and devastating trade war could mean “the animosity between our two countries in heightened,” he said.
“I was hoping this was all blustery political talk, but today it is changed.”