Welcome back to This Week in Canada, where Europe will be a tough sell for many Canadian businesses, national power is nothing to be embarrassed about, and more. Let’s jump right in!
HockeyStickMan sells—you guessed it!—hockey sticks. And one of the men who runs the Ontario company, Joey Walsh, is grappling with what to do now that President Donald Trump has imposed new tariffs of 50 percent on hockey sticks and more than 500 other products made in Canada. HockeyStickMan is one of the largest online hockey retailers in North America, delivering items to American shoppers from a fulfillment center near Buffalo.
The possibility that Canada will become the first “associate member” of the European Union also raises the notion that an economic relationship that has long been secondary for Canada and its many industries might become far more consequential.
But that future seems far away for Walsh and HockeyStickMan. The reason: Roughly half of the company’s business comes from the U.S. and is built from relationships he has spent 15 years developing. Europe simply cannot replace them, he told me.
Walsh described himself as a “very big supporter” of Canada’s efforts under Prime Minister Mark Carney to stand up for itself, become less dependent on the U.S., and fight back with the “dollar for dollar” counter-tariffs that began two weeks ago. Walsh is deeply critical of the Trump administration’s trade negotiating tactics, but draws a distinction between the administration and Americans.
“I know that this is not an expression of Americans,” Walsh said, adding that he still believes in the U.S. and thinks the country will eventually “correct this.”
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