My father and I fished the American side of the St. Mary’s River out of Sault Ste. Marie, in far-northern Michigan on Monday. The St. Mary’s (like the Detroit River) serves as the international border between Michigan and Ontario. Native people have gathered near “The Soo” to fish the rapids for whitefish and walleye for thousands of years. Sault Ste. Marie and its now-far larger Canadian sister city were used as fur-trapping hubs for generations, but the area is now known for housing the famous “Soo Locks.” These narrow locks allow massive Great Lakes freighters to navigate the 21-foot drop in the St. Mary’s, which connects Lake Superior to Lake Huron.
During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt understood that the Soo Locks were the “jugular vein” of the war effort. Ninety percent of the iron ore headed to Detroit, Toledo, and beyond — necessary to build the tanks, Jeeps, and planes that won the war for the Allies — had to pass through this narrow bottleneck. Fearing (for good reason) German or Japanese sabotage, Roosevelt turned Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, into the most heavily fortified location in North America.
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Today, as per international law and specifically codified by both the American and Canadian governments, not only commercial ships, but recreational boaters as well can cross freely into Canadian waters of the Great Lakes, St. Mary’s and Detroit Rivers, Lake St. Clair, etc., as long as we don’t anchor, dock, or touch land. Technically, fishing another nation’s waters subjects an angler to border law, but Canadian authorities are far more concerned with a simple fishing license. (Just don’t throw an anchor!)
The economies of both the United States and Canada in the Great Lakes Region are as neighborly as my fishing trip. While we wave at our Canadian friends trolling the same crankbaits for the same salmon, fifty yards across the invisible maritime border, workers in Detroit and Windsor look across the river at their neighbors working similar jobs, perhaps even at the same companies. Around 40,000 people cross the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor tunnel every day, including over 7,000 Americans and Canadians who commute internationally for work. Nearly 2,000 Canadian doctors and nurses work at understaffed Detroit hospitals and ER clinics. The Big-3 automakers (Ford, General Motors, Stellantis) operate massive facilities on both sides of the Detroit River, and cars will typically cross the border five to nine times before completion.
The auto industry not only consists of large factories owned by corporations well-connected enough to survive trade wars and/or lobby governments for special privileges. There are several thousand local tier 2 and tier 3 machine shops, stamping facilities, and tool-and-die operators in the Midwest and Ontario linked to auto manufacturing. Increased tariffs force suppliers to absorb massive margin cuts, and unlike global manufacturers, small shops cannot survive months of supply-chain friction without cutting shifts.
The fallout from the trade war reaches far beyond the assembly line. Canada’s retaliatory tariffs went into effect, targeting $20 billion in American goods. Midwestern dairy farmers, fabricators, and farm equipment dealers are next up to feel the squeeze. An Ohio farmer purchasing equipment or a local contractor buying steel will be paying the price for a far-off geopolitical feud that ignores the realities of Great Lakes commerce.
The National Taxpayers Union Foundation found that tariffs are costing Michigan households over $5,600 annually, the highest per-capita burden in the country. Worse yet, hostility from both Washington and Ottawa is threatening the “special relationship” between Midwesterners and Canadians forged on factory floors and fishing grounds over generations. The Great Lakes system generates trillions in economic activity precisely because both nations treat the basin as a shared resource. Politicians on both sides would be wise to consider the ramifications of throwing wrenches into one of the most important regional economies anywhere in the world.
Brady Leonard (@bradyleonard) is a writer, musician, and host of The No Gimmicks Podcast.