In Dearborn, Michigan, home to the largest community of Arab Americans in the US, one industry has risen above all others in recent years: Yemeni cafes.
At the forefront is Qahwah House, a powerhouse in the burgeoning Yemeni cafe world with 32 branches open across the country. Three of those are here in Dearborn, with more on the way, and they attract people from near and far.
“We estimate that around 10% of our Dearborn business comes from Canadian customers,” says Mohamed Ahmed, marketing director at Qahwah House.
But the recent downturn in relations between the Trump administration and Canada has caused it to pause a planned expansion north. The company was hoping to open a branch in Toronto, Canada’s biggest city that’s home to thousands of residents of Arab descent, until Donald Trump, who has repeatedly suggested that Canada become a US state, announced 50% tariffs on Canadian imports in July.
“Where it does affect us is that we are trying to expand into Canada. We have our registrations, license, everything in place to open up in Canada. For now, we’re holding off just to make sure it’s a feasible move to expand,” says Ahmed.
“There are a lot of super recent changes, so we’ll see how that plays out.”
Canada is Michigan’s largest trading partner, and for immigrant communities such as Arab Americans in Dearborn, situated a five-minute drive from the nearest border crossing, Canadians represent an important slice of their business. Dearborn’s Arab restaurants were so popular north of the border that a decade ago, the Toronto Star dedicated an article to highlighting the suburb’s best eating spots, despite it being a four hour drive from the Canadian city.
Last year, during the initial round of tariff disputes with Canada, Detroit businesses reported a huge fall in income from Canadian visitors.
“Since early 2025, Canadian visitation to the Detroit region is down about 30%, and remains at that level,” says Brett McWethy of Visit Detroit. Ottawa announced reciprocal sanctions on US imports that came into effect on 8 September. Talks last month failed to resolve differences between the two countries.
Home to about 25,000 people of Arab descent, the city of Windsor on the eastern shore of the Detroit River in Ontario has for decades provided a strong source of customers for the fleet of Arab restaurants and cafes across Dearborn. For dozens of families in the Ontario city, Friday and Saturday evenings were once spent lounging in Lebanese cafes after a quick jaunt across the border.
“We are south [of] Detroit [in Windsor]. I can see the river from my house – I am 1 mile from the center of Detroit,” says Robert Nelson, a professor of history at the University of Windsor who has written extensively on food and its cross-border dynamics.
He says informal surveys he has conducted have found demographic variances between Canadians in Windsor who are continuing to visit Dearborn and wider Detroit, and those who are staying put in symbolic opposition to the Trump administration.
“Those who go to Arabic restaurants in Dearborn are overwhelmingly Arab Canadians. Dearborn is where it’s at; there’s so much Arabic being spoken around you. Before [the trade problems] Arab Canadians would go to Dearborn restaurants,” he says.
“Now, if you have family or work [in Dearborn] you’re not stopping crossing the border because of politics. But there are members of the Arab community in Windsor who are traveling less, who speak about supporting local.”
One of Michigan’s biggest companies, Ford Motor Company, employs thousands of workers at its Rouge plant in Dearborn. It and a host of other automotive manufacturers have been hit by the tariffs war with Canada.
However, communities on both sides of the border are demonstrating renewed resiliency amid the politics.
For Khader Masri, who has been running Masri Sweets on Dearborn’s Schaefer Road for more than 35 years, the customers he knows who are Canadian have for the most part remained loyal.
“There are five or six families who come over here that I know of – one came from London, Ontario, last weekend. They are still coming,” he says.
“They are not thinking of any of that [political] commotion.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by Nelson in Windsor.
“Our lives are so intertwined with greater Detroit that it is no simple political act to say: ‘I’m not going to cross the border any more,’” he says.
“To punish the small business owners who rely so heavily on Canadian customers because of the current administration also strikes me as a very difficult argument to make.”
In a sign of the deep ties between communities on both sides of the border, an NFL game held in Buffalo, New York, on 17 September made headlines when the Canadian national anthem was sung on field by Canadian group, The Barenaked Ladies, to the ire of rightwing media in the US.
“I think the Canadians are smart enough to disassociate whatever president [Trump] says versus not coming here to visit the states for work or leisure. I think Canadians do a good job of understanding that,” says Ahmed.
Dearborn’s chamber of commerce said it hadn’t received any reports from businesses struggling as a consequence of seeing fewer visitors from Canada. However, several restaurant owners declined to comment due to the political aspect of the trade dispute and the Trump administration’s wider targeting of immigrant communities. Others interviewed said that they didn’t track whom among their customers travel from Canada.
Still, challenges among the wider food industry in Michigan are pointing to growing struggles. A report from April by the Michigan Restaurant and Lodging Association found that more than half of businesses in the state reported declining sales. That’s far higher than the national level, which was reported to be 39%.
For his part, Ahmed says the decline of the political relationship between Canada and the US has led to his company holding off on buying furniture from a Canadian supplier.
“There’s just been too much uncertainty,” he says.
