So how is not buying American going for you?
So how is not buying American going for you?
Last trip to the grocery store I couldn't find any non-US salad kits, and Silk NextMilk is made down there now, because I guess our plants were the listeria ones. Chip dip was surprisingly hard to find too, although I did it.
I'm very pleased with how many vegetables actually come from Mexico (definitely via the US though), and there's even a few things you can get from greenhouses, so that situation is less dire than I'd expected.
The hardest thing for our family are the digital services and social media. We are slowly cancelling Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, etc. But some things are used by my wife's business (Google, Facebook, Insta) and the just isn't a good replacement for YouTube.
Groceries are not bad thankfully. For hardware and household items, I can usually find a Canadian product if not at least Canadian made. Not being able to order to my door with Amazon is kind of an inconvenience but really we shouldn't be leaning on that anyway.
Gasoline is an unfortunate reality for us, since we don't have money for an EV right now and we need a truck to move renovation materials. And unfortunately construction supplies are sometimes a challenge to source (no way I'm going to Home Depot).
I really hope this gives Canadian industry a chance to blossom.
I’m lucky to live in a rural place with great farmers market infrastructure, so many options to buy from here. When I do go to the grocery store, buying Canadian has been the norm for quite a few years but I am making a more conscious effort, taking my time to check all the labels. Haven’t had problems so far
Nice to see another rural person. Lemmy is pretty urban on average.
Farmer's markets are very seasonal, of course. And like I've brought up elsewhere, people absolutely will resell store goods in them if they can make a profit doing so.
Me three! We buy all our meat from local farms. And veg in summer and we grow our own. I am also increasing what we grow on fruit
Considering how much stuff isn’t made in the US anymore, this should be easy. For a real challenge, try avoiding items made in China.
That'll go about as well as reading the TOS on everything before clicking agree
sorry to butt in but that’s a hobby of mine 😀
for example going full renewables: solar panels made in south korea (qcells), battery german (sonnen), ev south korea (hyundai ioniq), heat pump australia/japan (reclaim energy)
I’m now looking at computer parts made exclusively in taiwan (looks like gigabyte mainly) because europe appears to have 0 competitive chip makers
it seems you can still buy bigger items that are local or non-china made but you will be punished for it, prices are anywhere from 10% to 100% higher
I went to buy a pair of scissors this week. I could not find a pair that wasn’t made in China.
I went to buy a greeting card, 75% of them were made in China. It makes absolutely no sense. It’s a freaking happy birthday card. There is no way it’s cheaper to cut down the tree, mill the paper, send it to China on a boat, have it printed, then have it sent back to North America on another boat. WTF?
Hmm, I'm actually curious. SE Asia and Bangladesh probably are a viable alternative for a lot of things. Obviously, if you have an unlimited budget you can find some bespoke artisanal item made nearer by as well.
Killed all social media outside the fediverse. Even for our small business. Dumped Amazon and looking into Linux to drop Microsoft too. Degoogling the phone. We're pretty good at the grocery store because we grow a lot of our own and make what we can.
Even for our small business.
Damn, that's next level commitment! I've gotten rid of everything personally, but giving up on my income source being easy to find would scare me.
Also, RIP DivestOS. Still sad about that.
Fuck em. We will manage. They can eat a bag of dicks. If I could eliminate all American influence from our lives I would.
If you have a pixel phone then GrapheneOS is a solid choice.
If you’re up for a challenge try Ubuntu Touch, Mobian, Sailfish and Postmarket OS!
Mastodon is free, might be better than going totally off grid for your business.
The audience is smaller than twitter was, but if you find a niche the people are quite nice
I'm American and I'd rather buy Canadian too
I’m joining the war on Canada… on the side of Canada. 🇨🇦
Then we shall turn this continent into an orgy of maple syrup!
I'm American and I'd rather be Canadian, too. Best I can do is Mexican and that's looking better every day.
We should probably get out before they close the borders for us too
Last year I moved from Ontario to Spain so avoiding American products has been pretty easy at the grocery store. The main thing has been cancelling online American services like Netflix, Amazon, Google one, Youtube Premium, etc.
Cancel them, but don't stop watching American stuff you like. Just don't pay for it.
This is the way 🏴☠️
https://www.simplehomelab.com/docker-media-server-2024/
It's a little daunting but once you get it up and running with a VPN, you'll never miss those enshitified streaming services.
Not bad. I get most of my veg from local Chinese grocery where everything is a little closer to spoil but cheaper by half and all the sourcing info is in a language I don't read so I basically wrote that off as a whole in the name of scraping by.
But was decently happy to learn that my spending habits were mostly Canadian centric by default anyway exempting snacks. Mind you I live in a chunk of Van where most of my fav stuff is imported from Asia through local companies and ports so my easy solve was just segwaying hard into Korean and Japanese imports.
Excellent grocery shopping today. We didn’t buy anything US (we think). The red cabbage didn’t have any country listed and we assumed it’s Mexican since the green ones were. We didn’t have to switch lots but for some products we bought alternatives: taco shells, granola bars, salsa. We also found some Canadian stuff sold out or almost: ketchup, cereal (we picked a different Canadian one). It’s fun to try new stuff! Also really excited about tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, lettuce and basil from Alberta! This is very early in the year for us to get local produce!
No Alberta bell peppers where I shopped, unfortunately. It's interesting that they're doing that in greenhouses as well. I went with Mexico, which is fine, they're cool, but the thing is you know it came in through the US.
I didn't buy any fresh tomatoes this time around, so I don't actually know what's available.
I was impressed that they have them in February. It’s pretty cold an early in the season for bell peppers. Tomatoes grow like weeds but bell peppers are slower. Mexico works as well. I shop Canada first and then almost anything but US second. For example I don’t like garlic from China.
Most of my groceries accidentally end up being nearly all Canadian products.
I haven't really needed to buy anything other than groceries this past week, but I have been looking for alternatives to other products I'll eventually need, and I will make buying Canadian first a priority, followed by Not American™ as a close second. 😂
Yeah, same. Aside from the products I mentioned it wasn't hard at all. I had to take a bit of extra care with canned fruit, I guess.
American software dominance is pretty out of control. If you don't want to use American streaming, you pretty much have to go to piracy instead, and if you want to talk to IRL people online US social media is the main game in town. Not to mention the internet backbone itself being centered in the US.
For online shopping, you can go Chinese. I need to look into if there's any non-US Western options.
Had to buy Corn Starch from Austrian company. Because the Fleichmann's CANADA brand corn starch is Made in USA. And could actually find a Canadian Manufacturer
Oh what company is that?
Bakers Supply
I'm currently switching all my computing/cloud stuff over to Canadian and/or EU providers. I'm going to move my domains to Easy DNS and try out a VPS from LunaNode.
Would you recommend LunaNode? I’ve been looking for AWS, gcloud, Azure, and DigitalOcean alternatives and a lot are underwhelming.
I'm actually pretty pleased so far. I had to contact support to sort out a payment problem but they were incredibly quick to help me out. I think the price performance is pretty decent, but my needs are very minimal. The web ui is really straightforward as well, really no complaints.
I was about to say there's TunnelBear VPN, but, just found out they've been acquired by McAfee , so boo.
I use Mullvad, based in Sweden. Works great for me.
Private Internet Access is UK-owned, it looks like.
Not much changed for me personally, I already mostly buy local.
Btw if you really want to hurt america see if you can modify your rrsp/resp/tfsa/<other 4 letter acronym> to exclude American companies (and O&G while your at it). It's hard and probably not good from a purely financial perspective, but I think it has a lot more impact.
I'm disabled. Also petition your government leaders to divest CPP from American companies and investment firms.
Already did it! And boy, was I glad I had when Trump started doing things.
VEU is one example ETF on the TSX.
It's generally going well. I already did this boycott once before during Trump 1.0, so I know what do look for.
It's a bit harder this time around because there are things we need where a Canadian (or at least non-American) alternative doesn't exist. The big one is diapers, as we haven't been able to find anything non-American that also works within our budget and time constraints.
It's unfortunate, but also only temporary. My kids should be out of diapers in a few years, provided the world doesn't end before then.
Contact your local store to order https://www.royale.ca/diapers Made in New Brunswick.
Oh, well that looks promising!
We did it, Lemmy?
I'll do some research today to see if they are available where I live, or if they can be made so. Thanks for the tip.
It looks like AliExpress sells some diapers. I have no idea how they compare price-wise, though, and the quality is bound to be somewhat lower.
In China they culturally have an alternate solution, so maybe that's why outsourcing has been slower in the diaper market.
Signed up for the Odd Bunch. You get imperfect produce which is still perfectly edible delivered all from local producers. Like a CSA share. It actually ends up being less expensive than the store. You'll have to be creative in using it up, but it's a great option. Link: https://go.referralcandy.com/share/9TSC9RD?s=sp&t=cp
Looks like it's just major cities, which makes sense, but then again if you're not in a major city you probably have gift overgrown zucchinis appearing on your front step anyway.
What months does it run where you live?
I just started, I think every month. I'll find out, my SO ordered it so I'm not sure.
I am also a subscriber. While some of the produce still comes from the US, I think it reduces our dependence by reducing waste. It is cheaper than the super market but still more expensive than the local grocers here in Vancouver.
I don't mind supporting small farms in the US or buying their imperfect produce so it doesn't get wasted.
Wonder if there's a version of this from the states.
Looks like this is: https://www.imperfectfoods.com/
The other day I took my German car to the Asian market to pick up curry ingredients and enjoyed the night watching the Red Green show sooooooo.....pretty great honestly. 👍
Anyone have suggestions for Canadian cat food that isn't overpriced? I've got like 15 cats so I go through a lot in a month.
Most Purina products are at least produced and manufactured in Canada. I have been using the beyond line of products and my cats love it.
Sadly, it is a mega agro corp.
Acana is Canadian, though they are not super cheap but certainly not the most expensive either. My dogs like it, and one of them is a picky eater.
Most of my groceries are either already made in Canada or imported from Mexico. I didn't have to change much.
It's not a cheap way to shop, I will admit, but it can be done. Canada makes a lot of food, especially here in BC where I live. Beef, pork, sausages, honey, dairy, milk-alternatives, breads, and so much more.
For non-grocery items there are numerous retailers that are Canadian. London Drugs is a great one here in western Canada. Online shopping is a bit harder because Amazon is so hard to replicate, but honestly at that point I just buy from Aliexpress. If I'm going to order cheap crap online I'll just get it from the source instead of sending money to the US.
Seconded. half the stuff on Amazon is legendary brands like FleySwui08 or Glai77Zalo or Blukogluko. All highly recommended, of course.
TBH I'm not even sure why they do that. We all know it's coming from the same factory in Shenzhen as usual when we see that, right? And what comes tends to be basic but functional.
BC milk-alternatives
Yeah, I went with Earth's Own in the end. Their attempt at copying Nextmilk has not hit the mark yet, unfortunately. Side thing - why are so many brands in Burnaby specifically?
Earth's Own is great. I love their oat milk.
As for Burnaby - I'm not sure exactly. Probably cheaper and more available land for commercial businesses. Vancouver is notoriously expensive and cramped.
London Drugs is excellent! They even have an online filter for Canadian products.
Very disappointed to hear Silk NextMilk is made in America. Other plant based milks just aren't the same. Have you found a good alternative?
Earth's Own is Canadian and really good.
I buy Earth Own oatmilk but it's just not as good with cereal :(
Have u tried making peanut milk at home? It doesn't take more than 10 min and is incredibly underrated.
I tried the Good Earth oat-coconut blend. No bones, don't recommend as of now. Honestly if that's the brand I'm going back to just oat.
NotMilk, it is quite milk like. And company is from Chile.
I'm American, and not buying American has been the norm for decades. So far, it's working out pretty well.
I had to buy moisturizer. I saw two on the shelf. Flipped the labels, one was made in USA, the other made Canada. I picked the latter. That was it.
Get Cutibase if you can find it. Made in Quebec, works really well, scent-free.
I bought Cetaphil. Would look into Cutibase next time around.
Purchased some local onions instead of onions from the US, along with a few other things. Salsa from Mexico. Was a small grocery run, but my purchases would have been 15% American previously - but 0% this time.
If everyone is doing this, the numbers do start to add up quickly to a meaningful impact.
I was already bracing myself to be careful at the grocery store a while back cause I'd been following the story of the US rolling back food and product regulations. It can't be fun to be doing any Kitchen/ Restaurant work right now. Last time I out I managed to find all Canadian stuff. Lettuce was the hardest, self contained was all from California. I did find a Canadian made salad kit I stripped for parts, I wish the quality was better but it was okay. I'm not a real power user of lettuce anyway. It's just going to take a bit of adapting.
I also typically buy used name brand clothing and plan to keep going with that and with entertainment I usually use the free services, used stores and thrifts and a bit of yarr matey on the side.
I thought looking at the list online would be annoying until I realized you can just look at the food labels. So it’s easy. Had to buy cabbage instead of lettuce last time I was at the store. That’s about it.
Stupid easy...
Yeah it's going well. I already knew in November that Trump was going to fuck up the economy one way or another, so I bought a handful of bigger ticket stuff from the states at that time for Black Friday.
The main food staple I've had to change so far is baby carrots, I usually get the California organic ones in bulk at Costco. I just have to make a separate trip to my smaller local grocer for substitutes.
Hmm. I was stocked up on carrots, so I haven't actually looked yet.
I did notice the huge Chinese kind are actually from China. I'm gonna need a different knife if I go with those, haha.
I'm American:(
then you have more influence for change than the rest of us, friend. Buying Canadian products also means lobbying small businesses to purchase supplies from Canada. and if you happen across someone who doesn't understand what's going on, let them know. Hopefully they'll tell 2 friends, and so on.
Your in a prime position to sabotage then!
I work at a Walmart. I can fart on stuff
Didn't buy anything american this week, at all, but I'm due to go grocery shopping.
I'm making a pot pie from some leftover beef and bacon fat that I turned into roux, I've got some potatoes that are getting old, some carrots, mushrooms... it should be tasty
Great until I went into Dollarama and bought an energy drink and now I need to get two gifts for 6 year olds. Most likely at Walmart 🤦🏼
We bake cookies as kids gifts. We never buy stuff. They chomp the cookies down and the next year ask if we brought them again.
sighs in American
hon, we don't hate you. but we're really not happy with your Emperor.
Pretty much, right?
I assume we all know some Americans, or ex-Americans. I'm not even close to the border and they're around. The good ones are all very welcome.
Whoever makes the best quality product against the competition, that's what I buy regardless of where it's made.
I have no bone to pick with whatever American company either, but geopolitics is happening. Even boycott aside I expect the value for cost of American products may go abruptly down shortly.
Don't watch any movies or most of tv
I pirate most stuff anyway, and the rest I borrow it on physical media at the library, so they're not getting money anyway
I can agree with that, 100%
Already cancelled Netflix and Prime.
Crave has plenty of good content and CBC Gem as well. I cancelled Netflix and Disney Plus, I will miss the latter a bit because of What We Do In the Shadows, but I've watched each episode many times so it's not like I haven't seen it. I'm also just trying to read more books in general.
CBC has some great stuff, actually. I consume more from them than anyone else, easily. And then a lot of "American" stuff is produced here too, although you'd have to check.
The streaming platforms are a different matter. Even Gem works like ass for me.
watches Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter on repeat, out of sheer spite