Birch Bay business reboots across border amid tariff war, Canadian strife

BLAINE — Suzanna Smith was late to an interview with Cascadia Daily News outside her once thriving, now shuttered women’s fashion boutique in Birch Bay. Formerly a trusted traveler crossing the U.S.-Canada border several times a week, she’d been temporarily detained at the Peace Arch port of entry.

Draped in layers of loose beige — a reflection of the preppy, equestrian style her store built a reputation on — the fashionista’s smile masked emotional turmoil as she stood in front of the vacant retail space that had been the Betty Be Good Boutique’s flagship location for 14 years.

The business survived the COVID-19 pandemic. It survived inflation. But it couldn’t survive the cascading economic damages of the tariff war and growing anti-American sentiments among Canadians as the countries’ leaders escalate their verbal attacks. She started a pop-up across the border to help sustain her Birch Bay location amid decreasing traffic. Now, her Surrey-based store is the only remnant of her once U.S.-based boutique.

“I feel that never before has politics played such a role in small businesses,” Smith said. 

Nonetheless, Smith, a Canadian citizen who lives blocks from the border in Surrey, said she remained a cheerleader for Americans even after her store closed, sticking with her L.A.-based designers and pushing back on her Canadian neighbors when they talked about boycotting visits to Washington State. 

But now she has been stripped of her Nexus pass. Frustrated, disheartened and fearful of crossing the border, Smith said she still wasn’t entirely ready to give up on her southern neighbors but also wasn’t sure what a path forward looks like.

The Nexus program is designed to expedite personal travel for low-risk, pre-approved individuals. For many people whose lives are split across the border, it’s deemed essential.

Smith has family in both countries. She said she’s been a trusted traveler since she was 9 years old and has never had an infraction until September, when she headed south to Blaine to fetch American-designed goods to stock her new store in Surrey, B.C.

With an empty Porsche SUV, Smith zipped through the expedited Nexus line on her way to her P.O. box to pick up a mix of commercial and personal parcels on Sept. 22. She told the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent that she was picking up parcels. She didn’t think much of the routine interaction; she’d crossed the border thousands of times as a Whatcom County business owner for 14 years.

This time, she was flagged at a CBP checkpoint on the way back as she entered a line of enormous trucks in the commercial lane to pay import taxes and tariffs. The agent informed her that she deceived immigration officers by not declaring that her trip south included business in the U.S. and that she failed to pay a $20.80 fee to CBP, which covers the single-crossing commercial truck fee and USDA agricultural inspection.

Jessica Turner, a CBP public affairs officer, did not answer questions specifically about the $20 fee, which went up to $22.10 on Oct. 1. She did say the Nexus program bans card-holders from using it for commercial reasons.

Smith said she had never heard of the fee and offered to pay it on the spot, noting that she’d crossed under similar circumstances two other times. The moment was tense.

“I could see Canada in the distance, and I was like: ‘I’m this close to back home,’” she said. “But I was shaking.”

Smith admitted she made a legitimate mistake but struggled with the outsized consequences to her life and business — the loss of her Nexus pass.

“For 14 years, when I was running the business and I had an E2 visa and I was employing Americans and investing in the country, I could use that lane,” Smith said. “Now, I’m considered an untrusted traveler with my Nexus revoked.”

Blaine immigration attorney Len Saunders said Smith wasn’t the only person in September who reached out to him under nearly identical circumstances with regard to losing their Nexus card. He’d never heard of the $20 fee, either.

Saunders said the heavy-handed enforcement of the rule will create yet another chilling effect in a relationship that is already frosty as Canadians avoid jeopardizing their Nexus card.  

“My heart just sunk into my stomach as soon as I saw it revoked,” Smith said. “This has been a total devastation because I feel as though they kicked me on the way out the door.”

Casualty of the tariff war

At its peak, Betty Be Good Boutique — named as a playful admonishment to Smith’s mother, Betty — had nine employees at three locations: Birch Bay, Lynden and Fairhaven.

“When I opened my company, it was wildly successful right off the bat,” Smith said. “There’s nothing like this store in Blaine.”

Canadian shoppers made the business profitable in the small border community that wouldn’t otherwise have the population necessary to support it. In certain seasons, Canadians accounted for up to 40% of the store’s business.

But when Trump was elected, Smith said she recognized the need to get smaller to weather a brewing economic storm. Even the threat of tariffs is enough to eat up profit margins in the fashion industry, which sets prices six to eight months out of production. So, she closed the Lynden store. (The Fairhaven location had already been shuttered for unrelated reasons.)

“It puts the whole supplier into this panic mode because now they have to produce the product with the expectation of a tariff,” Smith said. “Prices went up immediately.”

What ensued was 18 brutal months before Smith shuttered her American dream.

Compounding issues was the drop in Canadian visitors to the U.S. as the famously polite nation bristled with indignation over Trump’s taunting. Since taking office a second time, Trump has called the once strong ally “the worst country,” renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America and repeatedly suggested the U.S. absorb Canada as the 51st state. The president launched aggressive 50% tariffs on a broad range of Canadian goods on Aug. 22 after the countries’ trade negotiations collapsed.

According to market research and analytics firm Leger, a late-summer poll found 41% of Canadians considered the U.S. an “enemy country” in the wake of the collapsed trade deal.

In August alone, roughly 110,000 fewer B.C. vehicles came across the border in Whatcom County than in 2024 — a 45% decrease in traffic, according to an analysis by Whatcom Council of Governments.

Nearly 8 out of 10 business owners reported negative economic impacts from the decrease in Canadian travelers, according to a survey of Whatcom County businesses by the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University. Roughly half said they feared for the survival of their business.

Smith had best friends in Canada who were no longer willing to come south to shop in her store.

“When I lost the Canadians, it takes your profit away,” Smith said. “I prioritized paying my rent and paying my employees, and didn’t take a salary. I brought money from Canada to sustain the company.”

Even with the one store and not paying herself, the business was no longer profitable in the U.S. 

Smith launched a pop-up in Surrey with the goal of reminding Canadians of what they were missing across the border, drawing them south. It generated enough money to prop up the Blaine store, she said. 

With the situation in the U.S. only getting worse, Smith decided to cut her losses. On May 31, Betty Be Good Boutique’s flagship store was closed.

“I really believe that 175 years of neighborly cooperation is going to win out, but we have to get through this rough patch,” Smith said.

Isaac Stone Simonelli is CDN’s enterprise/investigations reporter; reach him at isaacsimonelli@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 127. For confidential tips, email isimonelli@proton.me.