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On the front porch of her tidy yellow house on Canusa Street — so named because it runs along the border with Canada in tiny Beebe Plain, Vt. — Jan Beadle recently removed the American flag and hung a Canadian one in its place.
Ms. Beadle, who has lived along the border for 71 years, hoped that the red maple leaf rippling in the breeze would send a message to her neighbors in the country across the way: I stand with you. And I’m sorry.
“I do feel like it reflects on me, somehow,” she said of President Trump’s frequent jabs at Canada, including his imposition of steep new tariffs and his talk of making it the 51st state. “As a kid, my family went to church in Canada. I went to the movie theater there, and to a youth club. We were just a group of kids together. We weren’t labeled as Canadian or American.”
The economic impact of Mr. Trump’s trade war with Canada is already palpable on both sides of the border. Economic data shows a steep drop-off in spending by Canadians at Vermont hotels and restaurants; normally, 750,000 Canadian visitors spend $150 million in the state each year. Governors of New England states plan to meet on Monday in Boston with leaders from five Canadian provinces to strategize about the strain in their trade relations.
But in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, where many towns and villages sit close by the border, residents also fear the loss of a kinship that has run deep for as long as they can remember.
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