Before Matthew Shoemaker became mayor of Sault Ste. Marie — before he could read or ride a bike, even — he knew what formed the bedrock of his hometown: the Algoma Steel factory, and the Michigan town across the river.
Sitting at his desk this month, both weighed heavily on him.
For over a century, Sault Ste. Marie has grown around Algoma Steel. Now, the Trump administration’s tariffs on Canadian steel exports threaten to devastate the local economy and its 80,000 people. And the close bond with the city’s border twin in Michigan has been ruptured as a consequence of the escalating trade war between the two nations. Canadians, who frequently cross the border to live parts of their lives on the other side of the river, are hurt, angry and no longer feel welcome in the United States.
“The tariffs are so specific to our main industry that it feels personal, it feels like the American administration is attacking Sault Ste. Marie,” Mr. Shoemaker, 37, said in an interview this month.
Mr. Shoemaker’s own father worked at Algoma Steel. His mother immigrated from Italy after World War II, sponsored by an uncle who worked at the mill. So did the brothers who came with her, and her sisters’ husbands.
“It is a central entity in the history of so many people’s families here,” Mr. Shoemaker said. “The fact that it has fallen on hard times causes a real emotional reaction.”
More than half of the steel produced in Sault Ste. Marie used to be shipped to the United States, and the 50 percent tariffs imposed by the Trump administration have devastated the company’s finances.
In March, Algoma Steel, one of only three major Canada-based steel producers, abruptly laid off 1,000 workers it had planned to phase out over two or more years through retirements and reassignments.
Mr. Shoemaker believes the real toll could reach 3,000 jobs, once the layoffs’ full impact makes its way through the city’s broader economy. And things are not getting better soon.
Talks between the United States and Canada broke down last month, and hoped-for tariff relief for steel did not materialize.
The Canadian government has supported Algoma Steel through previous downturns — it has gone bust four times in its history — and will direct a steel contract for the construction of icebreakers to the company. But that will not make up for the loss of the U.S. contracts that form the core of its client base.
Twins at Birth
“The Soos” — as Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., are affectionately known — were born as one village on opposite banks of a river, settled by French Jesuit missionaries in 1668. They were later divided as the St. Marys River became the international border between the United States and Canada.
But the twin towns stayed knit together.
An American, Francis Clergue, founded a steel and iron company on the Canadian side in 1901, drawn by a nearby mine and a waterway that could carry the processed metals to the U.S. market.
The Soos grew in tandem — the Canadian one significantly bigger — and for the next 125 years, aside from during the pandemic, the border was an afterthought.
Canadians crossed to Michigan regularly for cheaper gas, good bars and holidays at nearby campsites. Americans brought their children to the Canadian side for sports practice at the local pool and hockey rink, and the two towns maintained a slew of shared social activities, mostly on the Canadian side, which has more infrastructure.
But traffic over the bridge from Ontario into Michigan fell by a quarter last year after President Trump’s first round of tariffs, as people in Sault Ste. Marie, like many Canadians, expressed their anger by canceling visits.
Carlo Lucio, 62, said he had no qualms paying a few extra dollars to fill up his car on the Ontario side instead of Michigan, which had been his weekly routine before the tariffs. He retired from Algoma in 2024 after 36 years and counted himself lucky to have left with a full pension just before the tariffs hit.
Harder was pulling out of pool tournaments in the United States, the hobby he most looked forward to. After much thought, he skipped one, though in recent months he had been toying with the idea of returning.
“When the trade talks broke down, I said I can’t even think about going back,” Mr. Lucio said. “The U.S. government has made it very clear. They are not welcoming Canadians.”
His biggest worry now is for his former colleagues. One of them is Mike Caruso, 49, who worked alongside Mr. Lucio and was among the 1,000 people laid off in March.
Mr. Caruso rushed to find a new job, one that takes him to a mine in northern Ontario two weeks a month. “I’m lucky,” he said, despite the strain it puts on family life. “There’s 1,000 guys out there looking for work.”
More Than Steel
The deep bonds between the two Soos were built by more than steel. For some people, crossing the border has meant belonging.
Ginny Cymbalist moved to the Michigan Soo in 1970, and one of the first things she did, she said, was cross the bridge to the nearest synagogue — in Ontario. Jews from both sides of the border have congregated in the Ontario Soo as far back as 125 years ago. Congregation Beth Jacob was built in 1945, anchoring the small cross-border community that today counts about 35 families.
“I got married there,” Ms. Cymbalist, 82, said in a phone interview from her home in Michigan. “My sons had their bar mitzvahs there.” She and her late husband both served as presidents of the congregation over the decades.
She is still in Ontario several times a week, including this past week for Rosh Hashana. Ms. Cymbalist said that the trade war was deeply upsetting.
“I’m quite concerned. There is a lot of frustration about the tariffs; I hear the anger, they’re hurt,” she said of her Canadian friends.
Despite the close ties within the Jewish community, Tova Arbus, the congregation president, worries that the trade war could still cause a strain. Just this summer, one Ontario couple said they were not comfortable crossing into Michigan for an annual Jewish retreat held there.
“They were very firmly, like, we’re not going into the States,” Ms. Arbus said.
Rallying Cry
On a warm evening this month, roughly 6,000 people from the Soos poured into the local hockey arena on the Canadian side for a concert by the rock star Bryan Adams.
Mr. Adams, who is himself from an Ontario border town, has been outspoken about the trade war and released a new single this summer, “51st State,” denouncing Mr. Trump’s repeated assertion that Canada should be part of the United States.
Mr. Adams said it was important for artists to speak up, adding that one friend he had asked to collaborate on his coming album, which is mostly about Canada, told him he was worried about losing his U.S. green card. “People are scared,” he said in an interview just before going onstage.
But the threats from the Trump administration, he added, are pulling Canada together. “This kind of rhetoric that’s coming from south of the border is uniting a lot of Canadians, in a way I’ve never seen in my lifetime,” Mr. Adams said.
About two hours into the show, after his biggest hits had left the crowd sweaty and tired, Mr. Adams said he would play a new song. The audience fell quiet and then erupted in cheers at the chorus — a defiant refusal to accept annexation, set to a driving beat — “You might have too much on your plate, go on load us up with tariffs, but we’ll never be the 51st state.”
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