In March: a 25% tariff imposed by the U.S on Canadian steel and aluminum. Soon after: a host of retaliatory tariffs passed by Canada against American goods. And then, in late August, a new pledge by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to remove most — but not all — of those counter-tariffs by Sept. 1.
The trade policies between the U.S. and its northern neighbor have careened in recent months, sending businesses into uncertainty as President Donald Trump pushes through aggressive and evolving negotiating tactics.
In New Hampshire, they appear to be having an impact. By June 2025, exports to Canada for the year were 42.6% lower than at the same point in 2024, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Foreign Trade Bureau.
But this fall, lawmakers and state officials are hoping to push past the chaos and make a simple pitch: The Granite State is still open for business.
Over multiple days in early September, New Hampshire leaders will carry out a trade mission with Canadian and American businesses to try to strengthen cross border ties. The efforts will culminate in Quebec City, when Gov. Kelly Ayotte will participate in what has been billed as an “intimate reception” for politicians and business leaders at a Hilton hotel.
Plans for the trade mission, which are still under development, include a Sept. 8 bus tour to Nova Scotia — by way of Littleton — with business leaders from both countries, according to Sen. Tim McGough, a Merrimack Republican and the chairman of the New Hampshire Canadian Trade Council. That will be followed by a journey to Quebec ahead of the event with the governor,
“We’re pretty happy to have a good contingent of significant business leaders joining us on the bus,” said McGough during a council meeting Monday.
“They’re a captive audience,” he added, speaking of the Canadian business representatives. “And they’re looking forward to the captive audience too.”
The effort comes as New Hampshire’s economy has shown signs it has been affected by the trade war between Washington and Ottawa.
Canada is still New Hampshire’s No. 2 export country, bolstered in large part by sales of aircraft and spacecraft parts from companies such as Marmon Aerospace & Defense and GE Aviation. The state also sends machinery and fabricated metal products, according to a 2019 fact sheet from the U.S. Department of Commerce. But while in the full 2024 calendar year, the Granite State sent $1.2 billion worth of products over the northern border, it had only sent about $400 million by June of this year.
In contrast, exports to New Hampshire’s leading export country, Germany, were 3.2% higher in June 2025 than in June 2024. And exports to Mexico, the state’s third highest importer, were up 14.9% in June.
Overall, New Hampshire’s exports to all countries, which totaled $7.1 billion in all of 2024, were down 4.19% in June.
Uncertain times
The state’s Department of Business and Economic Affairs is watching those numbers.
The department cannot be certain the drop in exports to Canada was caused by the tariffs; it could be supply chain changes that are unrelated, said Adam Boltik, program manager of the department’s Office of International Commerce.
“But with something like a 40% drop, that does make you look,” he said in an interview.
To help businesses keep up with the changing conditions, the BEA has regularly posted the latest tariffs on a page on its website. But Boltik said companies must make their own decisions over what to do with that information.
“We are here to be a resource,” he said. That can mean helping businesses affected by the tariffs to find “mitigating measures” such as alternative sources for their materials. The department can also help companies look for new markets to sell their products if the Canadian tariffs are hurting their business, he said.
The department is limited in what it knows. While some top line economic figures exist, much of the BEA’s understanding comes from anecdotes. “When companies will come to me and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this coming in from Country X and all of a sudden, there’s a tariff on it. What happens?’” In many cases, there is no way to collect the aggregate data needed to better understand those anecdotes, he added.
Carney’s announcement that Canada would be lifting many of its retaliatory tariffs is good news for many New Hampshire businesses, Boltik said. Still, there is a new worry. On Friday, Trump’s executive order ending the “de minimus” tariff exception for U.S. imports will take effect. That change will mean that goods coming into the U.S. worth $800 or less, which were previously exempt from tariffs, will suddenly be subject to the taxes.
That, Boltik fears, could lead Canada to retaliate by imposing tariffs on small-dollar imports from the U.S. as well.
“There may be enough of an outcry from those Canadian producers and small businesses that Canada does something,” he said.
An enduring relationship
René Sylvestre, Québec’s delegate to New England, is optimistic the longstanding ties between the two geographic reasons can survive the tumult.
“Our economies are so intertwined that we’re still looking to do business and work with companies and folk in New England,” he said in an interview.
Despite the tariffs, Sylvestre said he hasn’t seen major changes in operations by Québécois companies, partly because the supply chains are so established. That includes aerospace companies.
One source of that optimism: the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, passed during the first Trump term as a replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement. The agreement protects a swath of products from tariffs, including agriculture, automobile products, textiles, machinery, and digital products.
“Pretty much most of our products are under the USMCA,” Sylvestre said.
That agreement did not stop the Trump administration from adding 25% tariffs to automobiles, steel and aluminum from Canada and Mexico, which the White House has said is allowed by security exceptions.
Sylvestre said trade missions such as the one in September are intended to reassure businesses.And the idea has precedent: In April, soon after the tariff standoff kicked off, a delegation of Canadian businesses visited Portsmouth for a similar trade mission.
Tourism decline
If businesses are staying the course, tourism is a different story. The number of tourists visiting New Hampshire from Canada has dropped around 30% this year, BEA Commissioner Taylor Caswell said earlier this month.
Animosity toward the United States, in addition to economic anxieties and fears about having trouble at the U.S. border have helped to contribute to the drop in tourism, Sylvestre said.
Before the trade war, there was “a kind of unconditional trust and love” between the countries,” he said. Now, feelings are unsettled.
“It’s really a perfect storm,” he said.
During Monday’s meeting, some said they have seen the effect of the drop in tourism. Janet Wall, a Madbury Democrat, noted that the Seacoast usually sees a late-summer burst of tourism from Canadians. This year, she said, beachside parking lots are not full, and business owners say there has been a “huge decline” in Canadian visitors.
McGough had a different take. Browsing the parking lots of the Merrimack Outlets this year, he has seen plenty of Québec license plates, he said.
The dip in tourism comes after New Hampshire and Canada were only just rebounding from the setbacks of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which the land border between the two countries was largely closed. In February 2024, Canadian Consul General for New England Bernadette Jordan paid a visit to the New Hampshire House to tout that turnaround.
“Whether it’s tourism, whether it’s trade, whether it’s people visiting families: We can’t impede that,” Jordan said in an interview with the Bulletin then. “But we still have to make sure that what we’re doing is still working. It does seem to be working.”
Today, under very different circumstances, Slyvestre hopes that that relationship will endure.
“I see this as one corridor,” he said. “Even though it’s two countries, there are so many things that we’re doing together.”