{"id":886342,"date":"2026-01-19T18:32:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T00:32:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/19\/duty-free-shops-say-theyre-still-losing-sales-as-canada-u-s-cross-border-travel-plummets\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T18:32:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T00:32:21","slug":"duty-free-shops-say-theyre-still-losing-sales-as-canada-u-s-cross-border-travel-plummets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/19\/duty-free-shops-say-theyre-still-losing-sales-as-canada-u-s-cross-border-travel-plummets\/","title":{"rendered":"Duty free shops say they’re still losing sales as Canada-U.S. cross-border travel plummets"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Windsor<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Owners of duty free shops in Windsor and Sarnia say they continue to suffer the fall-out from the U.S. trade war, seeing drops in business in the 30 per cent range year over year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Business at the Windsor-Detroit tunnel shop is down around 30 per cent, owner Abe Taqtaq said<\/h2>\n
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CBC News<\/p>\n

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Listen to this article<\/p>\n

Estimated 4 minutes<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"The<\/picture><\/div>
Business at Blue Water Duty Free is suffering as cross-border traffic plummets, co-owner Tania Lee says. (Submitted by Tania Lee)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Owners of duty free shops say they continue to suffer the fallout from the U.S. trade war, with shops at two southwestern Ontario crossings reporting drops in business in the 30 per cent range year over year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of those shops is located at the tunnel connecting Windsor, Ont., and Detroit. The owner says he\u2019s worried about what\u2019s next as he heads into the slowest time of the year in January.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this continues, unfortunately, we will probably have to make some difficult decisions,\u201d Abe Taqtaq said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing a family business \u2026 we’re going to try to hold this out as long as we can before we start downsizing a little bit. But at the end of the day \u2026 you know, I’m not going to sugarcoat this. \u2026 I am very concerned about our business going into the next few months.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Taqtaq said he remains optimistic that business will pick up again but he understands why people don\u2019t want to travel to the U.S.<\/p>\n

He hopes those who do cross the border will consider stopping by his store, he said.<\/p>\n

WATCH | Duty free shops seeing decline in sales:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Decline in cross-border travel hitting duty free shops hard<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Duty free shops, including the one at the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel, are reporting significant declines in sales due to a drop in cross-border traffic in 2025.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Drop in U.S.-bound passenger vehicle traffic <\/h2>\n

Return road trips to the U.S. by Canadian residents fell once again in October, according to Statistics Canada, this time by 30.2 per cent.<\/p>\n

That number has fallen by at least 30 per cent year-over-year since March.<\/p>\n

Passenger vehicle traffic from Windsor to Detroit was down around 5.9 per cent between Jan. 1 and Nov. 30 of this year when compared with the same period last year.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Passenger vehicle traffic from Point Edward (Sarnia) to Port Huron is down around 27 per cent for the same time period.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tania Lee, the co-owner of Blue Water Duty Free in Sarnia, Ont., said she is also seeing a similar sales decline as the Windsor duty free shop.<\/p>\n

The drop in traffic is harming duty free shops right across the country, said Lee, who is also the president of\u00a0the Frontier Duty Free Association, which advocates for Canada’s land border duty free stores.<\/p>\n

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\"Close-up<\/picture><\/div>
Tania Lee is the co-owner of Blue Water Duty Free and the president of the Frontier Duty Free Association (Heather Kitching\/CBC)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWe had one store close in Woodstock, New Brunswick,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we have stores in B.C. that are teetering on the edge. And also stores in Manitoba that have been really hard hit. They are telling us that they won\u2019t make it through the winter time, and it\u2019s heartbreaking because you can feel their pain.\u201d<\/p>\n

The stores had already survived COVID-19-related border closures and were paying off their COVID-era loans only to be hit with more hardship, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Frontier Duty Free Association is pleading for help from the federal government in the form of repayable loans for shops in need, Lee said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also asking for relief from red tape that shop owners say hampers competition \u2014 such as laws requiring compliance with Canadian domestic labelling requirements even though the shops are selling exclusively into the U.S. market and must sell products that are compliant with U.S. rules.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are really motivated,\u201d Lee said of the campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don’t have a choice. We have to get this done. There’s too much that’s riding on this. \u2026 We have committed to showing up in Ottawa at any meeting that we can get. We will fly there, we’ll walk there. We’re going to … show up because our stores need it, and we have to be heard. And I’m hopeful. I’m really, really hopeful.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Raleigh Culton
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Windsor Owners of duty free shops in Windsor and Sarnia say they continue to suffer the fall-out from the U.S. trade war, seeing drops in business in the 30 per cent range year over year.\u00a0 Business at the Windsor-Detroit tunnel shop is down around 30 per cent, owner Abe Taqtaq said CBC News \u00b7 Posted:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":886343,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1539,2783],"tags":[13473,5135],"class_list":{"0":"post-886342","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-shops","8":"category-theyre","9":"tag-shops","10":"tag-theyre"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=886342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/886343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=886342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=886342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=886342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}