Marketplace - Canada taxes back

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

Canada levied a range of tariffs on U.S. goods Tuesday, escalating an ongoing trade war launched by President Donald Trump. It isn’t the first time the two countries have tiffed over trade, but it is, by at least one historian’s estimation, unprecedented. In this episode, we trace the neighboring nations’ historic partnership, and weigh what’s next. Plus: Small business owners report mixed economic outlook, ChatGPT recommends a made-up deodorant brand, and Monterey Park, California, models community-led data center resistance.Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.Marketplace is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.Read the stories in today’s episode:The U.S. and Canada have had trade spats before, but this one might be differentThis California city became a model for resisting data centersSmall business owners have mixed feelings about the economyHow a fake deodorant brand got recommended by AIBrick-and-mortar bookstores are back

A tariff here, a tariff there, a tariff tit for tat. Are we officially in a trade war? From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In New York, I'm Kristen Schwab in for Kyrisdal. It's Tuesday, September 8th, and it's good to be here with you. So governments usually do not formally declare a trade war. There's no document or anything. But there are tariffs.

And today, Canada imposed a bunch of them, ranging from 15. to 50% on American products, including steel, paper, electronics, and dairy. The country says it's responding dollar for dollar to tariffs the U.S. placed on Canadian goods last month. Canada is our second largest trading partner right after Mexico. Our economic relationship goes as far back as, well, pretty much since we've been neighbors. Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes starts us off with some historical context. The geography of North America kind of wants the U.S. and Canada to be trading partners. Historian Andrew Holman points out major mountain ranges and rivers run north-south on the continent,

and that lends itself to trade. But I think that there's something bigger here as well, is that Americans and Canadians, for all their differences, have the same kind of character. Holman, who grew up in Ontario, and now directs the Canadian Studies Program at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts, says there's a cultural affinity between the two countries, along with similar consumer tastes. You could say, they grew up together. They know one another, despite the fact that Canadians complained from time to time that a big brother should know more about little brother.

Like siblings, the two countries have often fought as they've traded stuff. Holman points to the 1870s when Canada's first prime minister, John A. McDonald, put in place something called the national policy, which included a protective tariff. so that manufacturers in Canada would be protected from competition from external producers. And the United States, of course, followed suit not too long after. In 1890, then Ohio Congressman William McKinley, who later became president, led an effort to pass a law that commonly became known as the McKinley tariff. Which raised import duties sometimes up to about 50% on Canadian goods. Duke historian Susan Colburn says it was seen as a way to,

to protect American industry, but some U.S. policymakers also thought of it as an inroad to potentially annexing Canada. Prominent American politicians talked openly about how these trade policies could be used to soften up Canada and bring it into the Union of the United States. Which, she points out, has echoes in the rhetoric taking place now. Like when Vice President Vance describes Canada as a state and then claims that's a for a radian slip. But a lot of things about the trade war now are unprecedented. I asked historian Andrew Holman how the current moment compared to prior fights over trade. Historians like the old adage that history doesn't repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes. This, he says, doesn't rhyme

with anything. I'm Stephanie Hughes for Marketplace. Wall Street today. Oil prices went up, so you can guess where stocks went. We'll have the details when we do the numbers. Data centers are a hot topic these days. Companies say we need more of them to keep up with demand for computing and AI. Local communities are mostly saying thanks, but no thanks. Monterey Park on the east side of L.A. County, it's become the first city in the U.S. to ban data centers. That's been entirely due to the efforts of a group of residents called No Data Center Monterey Park. KCRW's Brandon Reynolds has the story. Last December, Monterey Park residents started organizing against a proposed 218,000 square foot data center. While the city was in favor of the project because of the $5 million in tax revenue who was supposed to bring in each year,

residents were more concerned about what it would be taking out, a lot of water, for one, and enough electricity to power 40,000 homes. That's like twice the entire city of Monterey Park per year. It's just coming from this one site. Harag Balian was one of the organized. against the project, along with Stephen Cung. We filled the council chambers, and we basically told them that if they move forward with the data center, we would vote them out of office.

After months of rallies and public meetings, the city reversed course. In April, the council approved an ordinance banning data centers, and then it put the issue on the June ballot. That passed, with 88% of the vote. Kung says their little act of resistance suddenly became national news. It put us on the maps of other small small. cities looking to ban data centers. And so in the last few months, a dozen communities across California and around the U.S. have slid into the Monterey Park Group's DMs.

Alessandro Mitchell runs a tenants rights group in Montana called Missoula Neighbors United, which had also been fighting a data center project, this one on the side of a former lumber mill. Mitchell knew he'd need some help. I saw their victory, and I thought, well, these people are ahead of the pack. What advice did Mitchell get? Stephen Cung says, skip the ballot measure. Having a referendum means a lot of canvassing. It means starting a ballot measure committee. It's a lot of work. After all they'd been through, Cung and Ballion say an ordinance does just about everything organizers would want, and it's a lot easier than trying

to put a ban on the ballot. So an ordinance is the preferred path. It's the most direct path. In Missoula, the organizing paid off. The owner of the Bonner Mill Industrial Park backed out of that project as a result of, quote, the public's feedback. Back in California, an organization in Coachella called Viva La Causa sought out the Monterey Park organizers too. Viva LaCausa was formed years ago to fight against things like police brutality and gentrification. And now, data centers. We noticed the work that Monterey Park was doing and how they were successful in implementing the ordinance. That's organizer Ashley Vega. And so seeing that, we knew a permanent ban was possible. Vega says that Monterey Park organizers offered up advice and a toolkit of

useful apps for creating everything from newsletters to petitions. And in the end, Viva LaCaosa won their fight, too. On August 10th, the Coachella Council passed an ordinance banning data centers. But despite Monterey Park cautioning them about how much of a pain, a ballot initiative it can be, Viva LaCausa still wants to push for a vote. Organizers Cecilia Lima says they just don't trust their city council. If the city council votes it in, they can also vote it out. That wariness might make sense, as the EPA just announced its changing rules around public input on industrial projects, which could make it harder for residents to even find out there's a data center project in their communities. So networking may be more important than ever. In Monterey Park, the organizers are now

putting together a playbook that other groups can follow. Stephen Kong says the real secret to success is having weekly meetings to keep everyone accountable and keep spirits up. And those spirits will be needed in their next fight against AI-powered flock traffic cameras. The playbook big tech is using it against us feels the same. And so we're employing our same playbook against flock. And now they have plenty of other people around the country they can share that playbook with. In Los Angeles, I'm Brandon Reynolds for Marketplace. Got some fresh data today on how small businesses are doing, courtesy of

the National Federation of Independent Business. Its report shows businesses were having mixed feelings in August. They were uncertain about how the economy is going to play out. But despite all that uncertainty, businesses were feeling better than they usually do. Marketplace's Caitlin Tan takes it from here. On the main drag of Pinedale, Wyoming is the tire store. Owner and mechanic Kirk Griggs is coming off a busy summer straight into a busy fall. So hunting season right now, A lot of the locals get all ready before hunting this evening. And they go and screwing, you know, blow tires up in the mountains. Which lands them at Griggs.

He orders new tires and puts them on and throws the old ones onto a growing pile of junk tires, which Griggs counts. 120, 30, 150? Yeah, that's one week right there. For a little tire store, not bad. His only complaint is he's paying a lot more for inventory. It's hard to keep up, honestly. But, you know, out of the car.

country. Tariffs go up, this goes down, everything's kind of, you have to keep an eye on it really closely. So that he can adjust customer prices, sometimes daily. And it's a similar story down the block at the Mountain Sports Gear Store, the great outdoor shop. Manager Brandon Swenson snagged some fuel canisters for camping stoves. Comes in 450, 230, and 100 grams. Just this morning, he adjusted the price tag. The 100 grams was $5.99 and then that jumped up to $6.99. Swenson says those adjustments became more frequent at the start of the year. It was getting a little annoying having changed all the prices on all the gears. We have to do that manually. But he says customers are absorbing it. The shop had record sales in August, and that's pretty consistent with what's showing up in national

data. Holly Wade is with the National Federation of Independent Business. Small business owners are generally optimistic, you know, are feeling fairly supported as far as sales. But she says small businesses are feeling a little less rosy about the next six months. You know, increased fuel prices, inflation pressures, but also a tight labor market. Wade says factors like these, along with shifts in consumer spending, are making entrepreneurs feel more hesitant about investing in their business. I'm Caitlin Tan for Marketplace. Coming up.

And they had pickup lines like, you know, like a fast food place. Convenience is key. But first, let's do the numbers. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 628 points, 1 in 2 tenths percent to finish at 52,786. The NASDAQ sank 85 points, 3 tenths percent to close at 26,421. And the S&P 500 lost 45 points, 6 tenths per cent. to end at 7673. As we heard from Stephanie Hughes,

Canada is imposing retaliatory tariffs on several U.S. imports today, including paper and aluminum. Let's check in with companies that sell those products. Alcoa, one of the world's largest aluminum miners and producers, climbed three and a half percent. Its rival Rio Tinto gained half a percent. Silvamo, a paper manufacturer with mills in New York State and South Carolina, dropped one and six-tenths percent. Clearwater paper, which makes paperboard packaging crumpled 2 and 8 tenths percent. Bonsfeld, the yield on the 10-year T-note rose to 4.79%. You're listening to Marketplace.

This is Marketplace. I'm Kristen Schwab. In a world of endless Google search results, more people are turning to AI to shop. A recent survey from the consulting firm, Bain & Company, found that about a third of respondents are hitting up chat GPT, Claude, and Gemini to get recommendations and to price compare. But how exactly does Agenic AI decide which running shoes or shampoo is best for you? Dina Burke, co-founder of the media company Boys Club, went as far as creating a fake deodorant brand to find out. We got her on the line to talk about it. Dina, thanks for joining us. Thanks so much for having me.

So let's start with the product itself, Marouin. right? Yeah, that's right. It's a natural deodorant brand. But to be clear, it's not an actual product. Yeah. How did you create it and its presence, I guess, is more accurate online? Yeah. So Moroan, the pronunciation of it, I guess, can be debated, is a fake natural deodorant brand that I built a website for and indexed. And then it got picked. up by Chachabit with browsing on three weeks later. And it was part of a broader experiment to see if I could move what I'm calling the AI shelf. Yeah. Well, let's talk about the product itself a little bit first. At first glance, it's pretty convincing. It gives very millennial beige vibes.

The closer you look at it, though, the more things get kind of funny. Like, I was wondering how many people really want to smell earthy like fog. The scent was fog and clover. How much did you put into the product and what did it sit out for you? Yeah, thanks for asking. I put in about 20 minutes maybe into the development of it. I basically just pointed my AI at asking it to build a website in the style of popular CPG brands. And that's what it came up with. Yeah, you'll notice lots of sort of soothing millennial colors, but the graphic itself, I think, is a pretty big tell that it's not an actual product. Okay. So, 20 minutes, a couple prompts. But that wasn't the real experiment here, as you mentioned earlier.

What were you actually trying to set out to do? Yeah. So since June, I've been running a study I call the AI shelf, where I ask Chachapit and Claude and Gemini what to buy across a few different consumer categories. And I do this thousands of times a month and I track what they recommend. As I've been running this experiment, I got curious, is it possible to rank as a new brand? Because basically what I was finding is that there was a lot of consensus at the top with the top recommendations, with the top brands. When I was designing the experiment for Merowen, I was very intentional around choosing long-tail terms that I thought it was going to be possible for Merowen to rank on.

So what I mean by Long-Tale is not, okay, best natural deodorant. That is what's called a head term. That's going to be very, very hard to move. But a long tail will be sort of niche keywords that maybe aren't used as frequently by the big incumbents and will be more malleable as a result. And what did you have to do behind the scenes as the creator of this fake product to get it to start showing up on your chat box queries? Yeah, I mean, I wish I could say that I did some, you know, some special magic to make it get ranked. But really, I built a site and I built, well, I had my AI build a pretty robust Q&A section of that site, which I believe is really like what did the trick because the queries that I ranked for were basically pulling exactly from

that Q&A. I also did a substack post that was authored from the brand, which was basically like, essentially a launch post, but I didn't do any paid posts or fake posts other than the website itself, mostly because I don't really enjoy lying and I wanted to keep sort of the human impact as low as possible. And also just to see if it was possible with like really, truly minimum effort to be picked up. Yeah. So how often did Moroen, sorry, Moroen? Whatever, however you like. Is that right? How often did Moroan beat out? real deodorant brands. Yeah, fascinating.

So part of the ingredients that my AI and I concocted was this thing around colloidal oatmeal and that being sort of the main active ingredient. And Moran did rank there above brands that had, that were very legitimate brands that had clinical testing and had been reviewed by the National Exema Society. So it got like laundered in its recommendation back to people as something that's real. though, of course, it isn't. You know, some people might hear us talking about this and think, oh, this is not so different from when I Google search for a product

or when a company, when marketers, you know, use search engine optimization to make sure they rank high on a Google search page. How is it different? Yeah, I've been thinking about that a lot as well. And I think the difference with SEO is there's lots of ways that you can sort of check your ranking and see, you know, keywords that you're ranking for, and you can get really granular at this point. And that is not quite as true with AI.

It feels like this sort of middle layer is honestly invisible and a little bit impenetrable. And so that's what, you know, I'm trying to get at with this line of inquiry. I should say you used to work in marketing. So if we kind of combine that expertise with all the work you've been doing here, what should our listeners keep in mind when they're using chatbots, like chat GPT to shop? Great question.

I think I would say if a source or a citation is available around some claim or recommendation that your AI chatbot is making to see what's there and to see where it's being sourced from or to see what the citation is, I would say just to, yeah,

always be diligent if you can to check and see if possible where the recommendation is coming from. Dina Burke is co-founder of the media company Boys Club Dina, thanks again. Thanks so much. Speaking of shopping and how much it's changed, when Amazon first took hold of the internet,

it was primarily a platform for books. Not long after everyone started declaring the death of the bookstore. But 30-some years later, brick-and-mortar book retailers are still going strong. Barnes & Noble added more than 60 new stores last year. Independent stores are doing well, too. The American Booksellers Association says some 600 new independent bookstores opened up. Marketplace's Nova Saffo helps us read in. The city of Fresno in the center of California's farm country got a new bookstore in 2024.

It's called Judging by the Cover and it's tiny, 500 square feet. So we first started in 2023 as a pop-up. Ashley Morella's Guerrero and her husband started out selling books at vendor markets and music festivals. Then, as now, the store focuses on literature buying about people of color and LGBTQ people. And she gets choked up when she talks about its mission. One of like our first pop-up events, we had an elder who said they've never seen themselves represented in books before. And that struck a chord. Growing up as like a Latina, there weren't a lot of stories that represent us. Morellas Guerrero picks everything on the shelves.

herself, handmade books by local authors, traditional ones for major publishers, and titles in Spanish, Punjabi, and Hmong. There's also an event space in the back for community gatherings. This is the essence of the independent brick-and-mortar bookstore as a business, a hub for community, an antidote to online shopping. And that philosophy has turned the industry around. I mean, I've covered the industry for a long time, and sometimes a good year would be 60 new bookstores, or we only lost 30. John Mutter is co-founder of the newsletter, Shelf Awareness. He says the bookstore Renaissance began at a trickle about a decade ago, then took off during the

pandemic. The stores sort of became warehouses, and they had pickup lines like, you know, like a fast food place. They did deliveries on bicycles. And then they really got into online bookselling. The American Booksellers Association, which. which represents independence, says its membership has skyrocketed since 2020, from less than 2000 to more than 3,400 last year.

Many of the newly opened stores focus on particular communities of readers, of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and especially now, romance. We run like a romance bookstore opening story every couple days. In the old days, new stores tended to be either general or children's or both. And guess who's been taking notes as the Indies have been taking off? Barnes & Noble, Shannon DeVito, the company's head of books, says the chain pivoted away from its old model of nearly identical stores everywhere. Each store team now really has the autonomy and flexibility to decide what their store looks like when you walk in, what books are on that front table, what's in the bays, and it's allowed each of them to kind of breathe into the type of store they want to be. DeVito says sales are up, and for the second year in a row, the privately held chain plans to open 60 new locations.

Everyone is yearning for brick and mortar and finding places where they can go to be a part of the community, and a bookstore is kind of the automatic center of that. For Barnes & Noble, a little independent thinking is a smart business move. For independent Fresno bookseller, Ashley Morellas Guerrero, so is tapping into underserved communities. I worked for 10 years in book publishing, and I know that the stories that we carry on our shelves have the hardest time getting out into the world. It's a strategy that's paid off. This summer, judging by the cover, moved to a new, bigger location. I'm Novosafo for Marketplace.

This final note on the way out today, a little something that got overlooked in Friday's stellar jobs report, saw this in Axios. The information sector lost 23,000 jobs in August, down 12,000. since its peak in 2022. We're talking movies, music, telecom, data web hosting, and media. Motion picture and sound recording jobs specifically made up about a third of the decline as content providers consolidate and production moves out of the U.S. It's unclear right now how much of this we should blame on AI or just market shifts or even years later, a rebalancing of labor after the pandemic-ish-time hiring boom. Jordan Manjee is O'Neill Maharaj, Janet Wynne, Olga Oxman, and Virginia K. Smith are the digital team. I'm Kristen Schwab. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

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