Posing it as an act of patriotism and frugality, some Saskatchewan people are choosing to cancel travel plans to the United States amid a North American trade war.

U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Saturday the country will tariff Canadian goods — a 10 per cent tariff on Canadian oil and 25 per cent on everything else — beginning on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had his own Saturday announcement, vowing to strike back with a 25 per cent tariff on $30 billion worth of American goods on Tuesday. Those tariffs would extend to another $125 billion worth of American imports in three weeks’ time.

Then on Monday afternoon, Trudeau said Trump will hold off on levying tariffs on Canada for at least 30 days after Canada made a series of commitments to improve security along the border.

Still, talk of a trade war had already influenced Saskatchewanians’ travel plans, with dozens of people posting on social media that they plan to cancel trips to the United States. Some cite rising costs and the soon-to-be imposed tariffs, while others point to their dismay with the current U.S. administration and recent policy changes.

Joel Yeomans and his spouse travel to Arizona annually. Both of the Regina couples’s parents snowbird in the U.S. state — one pair in Yuma, the other in Phoenix.

Yeomans and his wife are there now with their three-year-old daughter, but he’s not sure when they’ll return again.

The two had marked their calendar for a planned trip to Las Vegas in May to celebrate their wedding anniversary.

That’s been scrapped.

Yeomans said the decision was split between several factors: his belief that the price of goods in the United States is rising, his plan to spend the same amount of money on a nicer trip within Canada, and a sense of patriotism.

“I think I do support Canadian and there’s definitely a patriotism that rose up inside of me in the last week that doesn’t always pop up,” Yeomans said.

“No one really cares when we tell them we’re mad at you because you’re mean to us, they care a lot more when they say, I’m not going to spend my dollars with you, because it’s too expensive.”

Given how their parents’s friends are now selling some of their property in the U.S., Yeomans and his family may not need to decide whether to avoid the U.S. at the expense of missing family.

“If the ball keeps going another way, they might make a decision that they don’t want to be down here anymore at all,” he said on a video call from Arizona.

Jeff Roffey — from Regina, Sask. but pictured at the Pink Street in Lisbon, Portugal — said he’s cancelling plans to travel to the United States and focus on other destinations. (Submitted by Jeff Roffey)

Trump’s recent policy changes, including those surrounding immigration and the subsequent U.S. tariffs, are also shifting Jeff Roffey’s plans. Roffey said his family has travelled to Disney World and Taylor Swift concerts.

On top of that, the Regina man said he and his wife regularly travel to Minneapolis and Denver for theatre shows and have travelled to Seattle for Labour Day weekend annually for more than a decade.

“I’m not interested in supporting a regime like that,” he said

“We had our hotels booked and everything for … Labour Day Weekend, but we’ve since cancelled.”

For Roffey, any change in the strength of the Canadian dollar in the U.S. is not the determining factor — it’s the policy decisions made by the new government.

“It’s the tariffs, it’s the poor administration, it’s not the dollar; I will still go to Europe and the dollar will be just as impacted over there,” he said.

Roffey said he and his family spent more than a week in New York City spending “an absolute fortune” on Broadway shows while they were there. Instead, they’ll take those dollars to London, England, to watch shows there, he said.

At this point, if the trade war was to subside or be delayed — similar to Mexico’s tariffs, which have been put off until March — it’s too little, too late for Roffey. He’s anticipating his family will spend the money typically set aside for U.S. trips on other destinations.

The silver lining, Roffey said, is seeing online communities come together to support Canada “and, quite frankly, it’s probably the most unified the country has been in a while.”

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe encouraged people in the province to focus on supporting local, whether that be provincially or nationally.