After four decades running Kiniski’s Reef—one of only three restaurants still operating in the tiny peninsula town of Point Roberts, Washington—the former professional wrestler has landed in a choke hold he can’t break.
Kiniski used to own Breakers, a bar right across the street, in addition to Reef. On weekends, they would get as many as 4,000 customers—needing 28 doormen and four sheriffs working overtime just to maintain order. At one point, he had 120 employees—“kind of a zoo,” he said.
Point Roberts’s economy isn’t just dependent on tourists—it’s almost entirely dependent on Canadian tourists, making this five-square-mile spit of land a unique barometer of the U.S.-Canada relationship. When Canada closed its border at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the town’s economy shrunk by 80 percent more or less overnight. Point Roberts spent the next 19 months cut off from mainland Canada and the rest of the United States. It had only just begun to find its legs when, in January, its economy collapsed again—this time, maybe for good. Surviving a global pandemic is one thing. Surviving Donald Trump is another.
The Canadian response was quick, and it was not polite. Almost immediately border towns felt the squeeze.
But Point Roberts can’t survive without Canadian visitors—and the Canadians aren’t coming. The thousands that would normally pop in over the weekend for some cheap gas and a burger by the ocean have answered the call for “Elbows Up”—the Canadian equivalent of “Don’t Tread on Me”—and are keeping their dollars at home.
Point Roberts is shrinking, shuttering, exhausted. The quirky little exclave has become an early victim of Donald Trump’s trade war, and a potent metaphor for the fraying relationship between the United States and Canada.
All along the 5,525-mile stretch of the U.S.-Canada boundary—the largest international border in the world—traffic is down, and businesses are suffering. In Blaine, Washington, the closest mainland U.S. town to Point Roberts, the number of visitors from the north has dropped by nearly half compared to the previous spring.
Even hundreds of miles from the border, popular tourist destinations like Palm Springs, Phoenix, and Fort Lauderdale are feeling the pinch, as flight bookings from Canada to the United States have dropped 70 percent.
“We’re operating in a zero profit margin,” Neil explained. “It’s an unsustainable business model. We don’t know how to plan for our future months not knowing if we’re gonna be charged 145 percent more on our ducks or 20 percent more on our ducks.”
Once they relocate to Canada, the store can order its product from domestic distributors, pay nothing in tariffs, and keep its prices fair and its business predictable.
But when uber-Canadian Mike Myers spoofed Elon Musk on Saturday Night Live on March 1, he put a name to it, mouthing “Elbows Up” in the curtain call. A hockey term popularized by legendary winger Gordie Howe, the phrase was soon plastered across the Great White North, on stickers, T-shirts, and flags. The message was unmistakable: This is a fight you do not want to pick.
Morrison frequently crosses the border to visit his weekend cottage in Point Roberts. Though not overtly a Trump fan, he supported Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in the recent Canadian election. Poilievre Conservatives had been heavy favorites for months, only to see their fortunes evaporate when Trump turned his attention to his northern neighbor. On April 28, Canada’s Liberal Party won a decisive victory that would have been shocking a few months earlier, fueled by Poilievre fanboy adulation of Trump and Poilievre’s half-cocked response to the attack on Canadian sovereignty.
“We went to Kiniski’s Reef about two months ago, right in the height of the tension between the communities,” Morrison recounted. “It was a Saturday night, and it was dead, like seriously dead. That for me was panic mode, because if we lose the places where we can socially hang out, Point Roberts wouldn’t be the same.”
As well-intentioned—and briefly helpful—as these events have been, they aren’t the sea change Point Roberts needs to stay alive. Many businesses are operating at a loss and deeply concerned about surviving the summer if things don’t turn around. Some—like Point to Point Parcel, a family-run mail-forwarding company in business for 24 years—have already closed their doors.
Hansen’s restaurants are earning about half of what they made in March and April of last year. Two of the three festivals she had planned for the summer have been canceled—both American and Canadian bands are wary of crossing the border.
Larry’s Liquor Locker—a hole-in-the-wall booze outlet that rents space from Kiniski next door to the Reef—has seen its profits drop by a third over this time last year. Owner Larry Musselwhite, a Tennessee native who commutes to his store from the U.S. mainland, is not shy about who’s to blame.
Around the pushed-together tables on the patio of the Pier, two dozen neighbors share plates from the buffet, catching up from the previous summer and talking about current events. It’s round two of “Elbows Down,” and the topic isn’t sunglasses—it’s fear.
Although the lone station that eases cars in and out of Point Roberts is currently a ghost booth, crossing into the mainland is a different tale. The stories range from having cars searched to being asked unusual questions to dogs sniffing glove compartments. The Border Patrol has even begun pulling over vehicles on the highway instead of at the crossing—which usually only happens during an amber alert or a criminal pursuit. Some complain that they are targeting only Canadian license plates. And even though the border traffic has been partially cut in half, the waits are longer than they were a year ago.
What started as an economic boycott has turned into a simmering brew of confusion and concern. “We’ve really shifted into a place of fear,” Neil King told me. “We’ve talked to a lot of people in Canada who just refused to go over the border because they are afraid of what’s gonna happen. There are too many stories coming out where people are getting stopped or being detained for unknown reasons.
“Because of the rhetoric, the tension, people were afraid of the reaction of the border guards,” said Morrison. “Once that chatter starts, people don’t want to cross, especially seniors. Don’t wanna deal with it.”
“I very much want to work with him, but cannot understand one simple TRUTH,” Trump wrote on social media. “Why is America subsidizing Canada by $200 Billion Dollars a year, in addition to giving them free Military Protection, and many other things? We don’t need their Cars, we don’t need their Energy, we don’t need their Lumber, we don’t need ANYTHING they have, other than their friendship, which hopefully we will always maintain. They, on the other hand, need EVERYTHING from us!”
All of these critical imports, once duty-free, now face tariffs of 10–25 percent. Trump’s childlike grasp of economics and his thirst for chaos have thrown U.S. businesses, big and small, into turmoil, threatening every corner of industry and pulling the rug out from under our very infrastructure. Moreover, he’s endangered the largely symbiotic relationship with America’s continental BFF, sending Canada overseas to seek trade deals with more loyal friends, which will only further isolate the United States—and border towns like Point Roberts—until America eventually returns to the international community a lonelier, weaker, and diminished nation.
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