FORT KENT, Oct 26 — In the heat of US midterm elections, President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada—and Ottawa’s retaliation—have taken centrestage in timber-producing Maine, walloped by the economic fallout perhaps more than any other state.
Residents in Maine’s frontier towns express worry that the tariffs have also triggered a rupture in cross-border relationships built up over decades, and that the intricate community fabric could take years to repair.
“Tariffs are definitely, economically, going to hurt us here” in northern Maine, brewery co-owner Shawn Pelletier said in Caribou, a city with extensive ties to Canada’s New Brunswick province.
Maine is reluctantly on the front lines of the trade war which saw Trump last year slap tariffs of up to 50 per cent on some Canadian goods, including logging equipment and some wood products.
