Windsor and Detroit are old friends. Some worry Trump’s tariff threats could change that

Many Canadians are angry at the United States over the threat of tariffs and U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated jibes about “the 51st state,” but those feelings are more complicated in Windsor, Ont., where people are deeply connected to their neighbours across the river in Detroit. 

“You’re throwing away hundreds of years of friendship and hundreds of years of connection because of the few stupid actions of one idiot,” said Rino Bortolin, a restaurant owner and former city councillor in Windsor. 

“[These tariffs are] just a really stupid idea. And we can’t take it out on the people,” he told The Current‘s Matt Galloway.

Earlier this week, Trump was set to slap 25 per cent tariffs on a wide range of Canadian goods, but delayed the move for 30 days after Canada agreed to increase border security and appoint a fentanyl “czar.”

Despite a temporary reprieve from the trade war, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday that Trump’s threat to annex Canada “is a real thing,” none of which has cooled the simmering anger many Canadians are still feeling about their neighbours to the south.

“It’s kind of like when your best friend does something behind your back, and you’re feeling a little hurt by it,” said Adriano Ciotoli, who usually runs a weekly dive bar tour to Detroit through his business WindsorEats.

“We’re taking a step back right now and gaining our composure before we go back to the city of Detroit,” he told CBC Windsor this week. 

For Bortolin, the cross-border connection is just as personal. His parents both immigrated to Canada from Italy, with his mother ending up in Detroit and his father in Windsor.

“They met here. They dated on the streets of Detroit, going down Woodward to see Elvis at the Fox Theatre,” he said.

“I’m a first generation Canadian that sees as much home in Detroit as he does in Windsor.”

He worries that when some Windsorites talk about pulling back from the U.S., they aren’t considering how closely the cities are connected, from their economies to their arts and culture.

Dive bar diplomacy

Tom Lucier owns the Phog Lounge, a popular live music venue in Windsor. He also runs what he calls unofficial tours into Detroit, aiming to show Windsorites a side of the city he thinks is a “blind spot” for many.

“I like taking them to places where, like, real human beings, ground-level Detroiters live … not the shiny parts of the city,” he told The Current. 

That means dive bars, art exhibits and out-of-the-way places to eat, instead of going “shopping, going to concerts, going to sporting events — and then coming right back,” he said.

Lucier says he’s been shocked to hear some of the anti-U.S. rhetoric from his customers, especially when he sees the border as not much more than “a line on the map.”

“I’m trying to bring people over there to give them the human side, have them meet their contemporaries over there. And this whole mess is messing with that,” he said.

Lucier acknowledged that his enthusiasm for Detroit isn’t always equally reciprocated. He regularly asks people across the river how often they think of Windsor. When the response is only sometimes, he tells them he probably thinks about Detroit 50 times a day.

“It’s not an exact same relationship, but it’s super valuable to me regardless of that lopsidedness,” he said

Nationalism push ‘a slippery slope’

Coming in the other direction, Jeanette Pierce brings Detroiters across the border on tours of Windsor and Essex County. She believes each city complements the other.

“For a long time, I had to remind people that Detroit has always been a great city,” said Pierce.

“But one of the things that makes us great is our proximity to Windsor. We get two countries for the price of one.”

Pierce is the founder of the City Institute, an organization aiming to educate Detroit residents about their city’s history, challenges and opportunities. She said it’s true that Windsor may not be top of mind for many Detroiters, but insisted they will notice if tariffs and tensions have an impact on businesses and consumers in both economies.

She urged Canadians to remember that not everyone in the U.S. supports Trump’s policies, and said that “there’s more of us that are frustrated and scared than not.”

A push for nationalism can be “a slippery slope,” she said, and “kind of how we got into this mess in the first place.” 

‘Safeguard our economy’

Irene Moore Davis was born and raised in Windsor, and has family scattered on both sides of the river. She said it’s easy to travel back and forth to be together — for the most part.

“There are moments in world history when that border becomes a border,” said Moore Davis, assistant curator of the Amherstburg Freedom Museum.

“After 9/11, things became much stricter for a while. During the pandemic, it was actually shut down. And now there’s a sense of, you know, something lost once again,” she said. 

Moore Davis said it’s important to do “the necessary things to safeguard our economy,” but hopes that this moment won’t cultivate any kind of hatred or division between Windsorites and their American neighbours.

“Most American people are good people,” she said, adding that it’s important to keep working on the region’s integrated economies and socio-cultural ties.

“It’s so important that we don’t let those relationships go.”

Bortolin, the restaurant owner whose parents fell in love while criss-crossing the border, says he thinks that Canada may eventually forge new trade agreements with other countries. But he doesn’t want Windsor’s relationship with Detroit to change. 

“I don’t want it to be where all of a sudden they do something stupid, like, we need a visa to visit … we want this to be a seamless area,” he said.

“When we talk about how great it is to be Canadian here, it’s so great to be Canadian here because we have Detroit so close.”