Trump's Tariffs Threaten a Quebec Town's Mill, and Its Residents Are Fighting Back

Drive across the Ottawa River into Témiscaming, Quebec, and the paper mill fills much of the horizon. The town was built more than a century ago around that mill and the pine, birch, spruce and fir forests that feed it. Today the mill sits idle. In early October its American owner, RYAM, began what it called an "economic shutdown" for "an indefinite period," after trade talks between Canada and the United States broke down and President Donald Trump imposed heavier tariffs.

Most of the mill's 360 employees are now out of work, held over for the moment by partial pay from a government tariff-relief program. Property values in town fell almost overnight, and "For Sale" signs now stand in the yards of the modest middle-class homes that make up most of Témiscaming. Residents worry that the people who keep a town running, from grocery clerks to the doctors at the small local hospital, could follow the mill workers out the door.

Nadine Suley says the loss could be more than a livelihood. She describes herself as not "a city girl" and was heading out moose hunting during the short season, as much of the town does. She joked that everyone will need the free meat this year. "It's not just a job. It's our home," she says, and the tariffs feel to her like "a personal attack." Ronnie Raymond, who like many here comes from a family of mill workers, fears the town will become a ghost town. "There's no work for anybody, really," he says. "It's scary."

The mill makes paperboard used in frozen-food packaging across North America and in the scratch-off lottery tickets sold at convenience stores, and it sends roughly 75% of its output to the US. In August, after trade talks collapsed, Washington put 50% duties on about C$28bn of Canadian goods, including pulp, stationery, boxes and other wood and paper products. Canada answered with its own dollar-for-dollar counter-tariffs. Trump argues such taxes boost American manufacturing and protect US workers from fates like Témiscaming's.

Seen from a distance, Canada's economy has held up. Unemployment has stayed around 6.5% since the tariffs began, with weak but steady growth. Up close, the damage is concentrated in industries the tariffs hit directly: steel, aluminium, autos, and here, lumber, pulp and paper. Stéphane Lefebvre, an employee and union leader whose father and grandfather also worked at the mill, says a 10% job loss in Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City or Vancouver would dominate the news and pressure governments to act. A local contractor told the BBC he has already laid off 13 people, a sign of how the pain spreads to sawmills and trucking.

Mayor Alain Gauthier does not blame RYAM, calling the US tariffs "a bomb to shut down our manufacturing in Canada." He wants Ottawa to put duties on US board products, which enter Canada tariff-free, and says he sees "absolutely no evidence of war measures being taken." Canada, he says, went to war "with kid's water guns." Some locals feel forestry has been overlooked. This month Industry Minister Mélanie Joly threatened Stelco, owned by US-based Cleveland-Cliffs, with financial penalties or a forced asset sale if it proceeds with layoffs of some 500 workers. Last week Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced nearly C$9bn for Ontario's steel and auto sectors. Bloc Québécois MP Sébastien Lemire says he is "very concerned and worried" about federal inaction. Joly's spokesperson pointed to $400m for forestry in rural and remote areas and a program giving tariff-hit businesses cash-flow access, and said Ottawa is working with all parties on a viable solution for the mill.

The town has faced a threat like this once before. In 1973 the mill's American owner threatened to close it, and workers and managers bought it themselves, creating Tembec, a Quebec-owned company with branches across North America and France. RYAM bought it in 2017. Now a local coalition wants to buy it back. "We're hoping that lightning will hit twice," Lefebvre says, though he argues it cannot happen without tariff relief or financial support from Ottawa and Quebec. RYAM would not comment on a sale or prospective buyers. Suley argues that backing the bid would match Carney's "buy local" pledge.

Frank Dottori, now in his 80s and retired in Témiscaming, was an engineer at the mill in the 1970s, helped persuade employees to take a 10% pay cut to fund the purchase, and later became CEO. The effort was thought foolish, and the Quebec premier "politely ejected" him when he first sought support. It succeeded with the union's help and an ex-employee with executive experience and forceful charisma. Today's workers need someone as bold, he says; whether the local group has that is "highly unlikely," but they could if they organise. He adds that the US tariffs must also be lifted for the mill to be viable.

Many workers are watching the US midterms, hoping falling approval ratings push Trump to ease up. Some tariffs on Canadian goods were lifted last week after lobbying by Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins, who is up for re-election in November, but not those on the Témiscaming mill's products. Suley and others want a resolution before winter, when sub-zero cold could freeze equipment in the idle plant and make reopening harder. "We're in Game Seven right now," Lefebvre says. "We're gonna play till the last whistle."