In the spring, Francis Roy packs his bags for a six-week stay in northern Maine. Roy lives in Quebec and will leave his girlfriend and children to spend the maple sugaring season at a sugar-shack he bought last year.
Roy and his team collect the sap from 60 thousand trees, boil it down to syrup, and load it into trucks that take it to the only place the road leads: Canada.
Most of Roy’s syrup finds its way to store shelves in the U.S., distributed by large U.S. bulk buyers like Bascom Maple Farms, Inc., which purchases most of the syrup from this part of Maine that stretches along the U.S.-Canada border. But before it can get there, nearly all of the syrup must travel through Canada along a route known as the Golden Road. Many of the producers, like Roy, are Canadian, crossing into the U.S. for a few weeks during syrup season.
But the undisturbed symbiosis of the Canadian-American maple industry could be drawing to a close. Looming and actual tariffs on both sides of the border are threatening to devalue millions of dollars in infrastructure and decades of agricultural practices. Syrup coming out of northern Maine, near the Canadian border is especially vulnerable because it faces tariffs going into Canada, and possibly, again coming out.
“They’re trying to figure out what’s our status here,” said Alan Greene, president of the Maine Maple Producers Association. “Can we get our syrup out? Can we sell it? Are we going to have to pay the extra trucking to get it back through the United States?”
The Golden Road, and the region more generally, are perhaps the ultimate example of the interconnectedness of U.S. and Canadian economies. Canada has remained one of the top two trading partners with the U.S. for decades, and the two economies share supply chains in many major industries, including automotive manufacturing and textiles. In 2024, Canada was the world’s top importer of U.S. goods – almost half of all goods in Canada come from the U.S.
The Golden Road maple industry only exists because of the ease of movement across the Canadian border. The network of roads became the way the Great Northern Paper Company started moving timber in the 1970’s, replacing the waterways of the Penobscot River. In these diverse Maine forests, some trees are good for paper, but others are better for syrup.
“What happened about a hundred years ago,” said Bruce Bascom, owner of Bascom Maple Farms, Inc., “people started putting buckets and tapping these trees.”
Further towards the coast, balsam fir and spruce grow and are preferred for paper. But the higher elevations along the Canadian border are lined with maple trees that produce about 200 tractor trailer loads of syrup each year. Each load is worth $125 thousand dollars, totaling about $25 million in syrup from the region, according to Bascom.
The Golden Road runs from the northern forests of Maine into Quebec.
His investments in the region include a storage warehouse in St. Zacharie, Quebec, where the Golden Road ends and trucks can unload straight out of customs.
“The U.S. and Canadian customs have got deals with the timber company,” said Bascom. “So that if you want to go up there hunting or fishing or even buying barrels of syrup or logging, you have to have a pass.”
At his warehouse, Bascom is one of four tenants at the industrial plant, working alongside logging companies and the truck company that hauls his syrup..
Here, he has access to the world’s largest maple conglomerate – the province of Quebec. The Canadian province is responsible for 90 percent of the world’s maple syrup exports and houses machinery tailor-made for syrup production. Bascom stores the syrup in Canada, then ships it into the U.S. for sale. Usually, his trucks pass right through to his farm in New Hampshire.
Buyers like Bascom pay prices for bulk quantities that could change by millions of dollars because of a shift in pennies in the price-per-gallon of syrup. If tariffs are too steep, especially when being levied by both the United States and Canada, the entire Golden Road maple region could effectively shut down.
“And so the initial conversations about tariffs were, boy, ‘how is that going to affect the bulk market?’”, said Allison Hope, executive director of Vermont Maple Sugar Makers.
“This is also the time of year that we hear regular complaints about the bulk price,” said Hope, “and, I do not think that tariffs are the method by which that concern will be solved.”
Producers are unlikely to enlist new talent or even the next generation in harvesting syrup.
“There’s a lot of know-how that goes into making maple syrup,” said David Hall, President, Montérégie-East, of the Québec Maple Syrup Producers, a governing body of the Canadian province that negotiates its prices and production. “There’s not a chance of a snowball in hell that you’re going to say, ‘this is for me.’”
If tariffs make shipping Golden Road-syrup through Canada too costly, the obvious alternative could be to transport it in the other direction through Maine. This remains a far-fetched notion at the moment. The trip to Millinocket from the border where the sugar houses are is a ninety-mile trek on a partly dirt segment of the Golden Road, hardly suitable for commercial use.
“The shortest way out of the woods is to go north,” said Bascom. “During the winter months and during mud-season you can’t take trucks down the Golden Road.”
The State of Maine has made attempts to take over the road, but the proposed costs of maintenance and an unwilling seller, have previously shot down efforts.
“When I bought my business in the U.S., there was no anticipation of tariffs or taxes or anything,” said Roy. “You never know what to expect.”
In the meantime Roy is happy with his new investment in a northern Maine sugar-bush.
“I’m still in school in this, but I’ll tell you that, it’s going well,” he said.
