"Palm Springs Loves Canada" : As Trump ignites tariff war, a US city is embracing Canadians with all its heart

Source: The Guardian

As Trump ignites tariff war, a US city is embracing Canadians with all its heart

An estimated 300,000 Canadians visit Palm Springs each year and Trump’s levies threaten tourism in the region

Lois Beckett
Wed 9 Apr 2025 02.34 BST
Last modified on Wed 9 Apr 2025 13.17 BST

Worried that Donald Trump’s policies are scaring away Canadians, a key segment of its tourist industry, a California resort city has put up “Palm Springs Loves Canada” signs across its downtown.

“It was a gesture to let our Canadian visitors know that what happens in Washington DC, is not the way that Palm Springs is looking at Canada,” Ron deHarte, the city’s mayor, said of the signs, which were installed on Friday.

An estimated 300,000 Canadians each year visit the Palm Springs region, DeHarte said, some of them staying for months at a time as they trade Canada’s harsh winters for southern California’s reliable warmth. But the mayor said he had been hearing from some Canadians that the US government’s tariffs, and its rhetoric about Canada, were unacceptable to them, and that they were responding by cancelling their annual trips, pledging they were “not spending a dime in Palm Springs”.

DeHarte said he understood that perspective, but he and other local officials were sending a “positive message” and hoping Canadians would reconsider.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/08/trump-canada-tariffs-california