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Grocer Loblaw revives Canadian product markers in stores
As U.S.-Canada trade dispute escalates, store signage and symbols return
“Shop Canadian” signs on grocery store shelves in Victoria, British Columbia, last year. (James MacDonald/Bloomberg)
Key Takeaways:
- Loblaw Cos. is restoring product-origin labels and maple leaf symbols in Canadian stores to help shoppers identify Canadian goods amid renewed U.S.-Canada trade tensions.
- The move affects a retailer with about C$64 billion in annual sales and follows new U.S. tariffs, Canadian counter-tariffs and calls to support domestic producers.
- Loblaw will also mark tariff-affected U.S. imports with a “T,” while Ontario Premier Doug Ford continues urging retailers and agencies to prioritize Canadian products.
The trade war is returning to Canada’s supermarkets.
Loblaw Cos., the largest Canadian-owned grocery chain, is bringing back signs and labels that shoppers used last year to avoid U.S. products as they protested tariffs and threats from President Donald Trump.
The company, which had about C$64 billion ($46.1 billion) in sales in its most recent fiscal year, will restore its previous practice of labeling the country of origin on signs in its fresh produce section, a spokesperson said. It’s also using the maple leaf symbol in stores to help customers identify Canadian products.
“Customers have told us they want to support Canadian farmers, producers, entrepreneurs and businesses. We want to make doing that easier,” Loblaw spokesperson Youmna Rab said in an emailed statement.
Loblaw ranks No. 18 on the Transport Topics sector list of the top wholesale/retail carriers.
Many Canadian consumers curbed their purchases of U.S. goods and or avoided travel to the U.S. last year, angered by the tariffs and by Trump’s repeated statements that Canada should be a U.S. state.
Those boycotts appeared to be weakening — U.S. trips by Canadians had started to tick higher again — before the latest blowup in relations between the two countries. Negotiations on trade fell apart last week, and the White House imposed new 50% tariffs on a wide array of Canadian items and threatened even more. On Aug. 25, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government unveiled a list of counter-tariffs on U.S.-made goods.
The new Canadian levies will raise the cost of food and consumer goods such as fish and seafood, cheese, milk and cosmetics when imported from the U.S. Loblaw will highlight tariff-affected items with a “T” on store shelves, as it did last year, Rab said.
The Loblaw policy change, which was reported earlier by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., comes after Ontario Premier Doug Ford called on big grocers to make it easier for Canadians to buy products made locally.
“Do your very best to look at the labels,” Ford said at an Aug. 24 news conference. “Let’s put pressure on the Walmarts. Let’s put pressure on the Loblaws, the Sobeys, the Metros — I’m naming the big retailers — to buy Ontario products from Ontario.”
The next day, Ford wrote to the chairs of his province’s government agencies to remind them of his policy preventing U.S. companies from entering into new procurement contracts. He had ordered the restriction after U.S. tariffs were first imposed last year.
“It drives me crazy when I hear someone’s buying something off the U.S., one of these agencies or hydro companies or whatever,” he told reporters Aug. 26. “It’s just common sense. We’re in a war. You protect your country; you protect your province.”
