Trump's Steel Tariffs Fracture Century-Old Cross-Border Ties Between Ontario and Michigan

For more than a century, the twin cities of Sault Ste. Marie — one in Ontario, one in Michigan — grew into a single community divided only by a river, their fates woven together through steel, labor, and shared life. In September 2026, a 50 percent U.S. tariff on Canadian steel severed that weave with the bluntness of policy, triggering mass layoffs at Algoma Steel and forcing a region to reckon with how quickly a century of integration can be undone by a single decree. What is unfolding along the St. Marys River is not merely an economic disruption — it is a lesson in how borders, long soften