When U.S.-Canada trade talks collapsed last Friday night, the recriminations began almost immediately, and not only in Washington and Ottawa. In Maine, Vermont, and Michigan—three states with unusually large economic exposure to Canada—elected officials from both parties, along with executives who run some of the region’s largest employers, have spent the past week saying essentially the same thing: enough.

The latest escalation came Monday, when U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told CNBC’s Squawk Box that Canada was responsible for the breakdown. Greer said negotiators had reached the outline of a deal by Tuesday night, only for Ottawa to add last-minute demands.

“In the last hours, I think there were things that the Canadians just—you know, they wanted more,” Greer said.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney offered the opposite account, saying the U.S. side introduced “last-minute changes” to proposed terms that were “unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.”

Politico’s reporting on the 72 hours before the deal fell apart found that the dispute centered on U.S. tariff rates on heavy-duty trucks, which Canadian negotiators pushed to lower late in the process. U.S. officials also pointed to internal turf wars, while Carney said the American side refused to extend auto-tariff relief to medium- and heavy-duty trucks. Regardless of which version is correct, the outcome was the same: 50% U.S. tariffs on roughly $20 billion of Canadian goods took effect at 12:01 a.m. on Aug. 22, and Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, and electronics are scheduled to take effect Sept. 8. For border states that depend on cross-border supply chains, those dates are less about Washington and Ottawa’s talking points than about whether goods can keep moving without another cost layer.

Maine’s senators, from opposite parties, agree

Maine’s congressional delegation has been unusually unified for a state represented by one Republican and one independent who caucuses with Democrats. Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican facing a competitive reelection race this fall, called the tariffs “a mistake” in an interview with News Center Maine. She said she recently met with Canada’s ambassador to press on dairy trade barriers and still wants “the very friendly, economically beneficial relationship” restored.

On social media, Collins urged “both sides to return to the negotiating table,” writing on X that the on-again, off-again trade talks between the U.S. and Canada create “higher costs, risk, and uncertainty for Maine businesses.”

Sen. Angus King, the state’s independent senator who caucuses with Democrats, has focused especially on the lobster industry. He warned that Canada’s coming 25% tariff on lobster—which takes effect alongside the broader Sept. 8 retaliation—could be compounded if Trump imposes a reciprocal charge on the processed product when it re-enters the U.S.

“If the president’s misguided trade war further escalates, the processed lobsters could be taxed again when they are shipped back from Canada to the United States,” King said, noting that almost half of Maine’s fall lobster catch goes to Canada for processing.

Collins raised the same underlying vulnerability months earlier in a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, telling Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that Maine’s meat, blueberries, potatoes, lobster, and lumber are largely processed across the border. Lutnick responded by pointing to USMCA rules governing which goods qualify for tariff-free treatment.

Vermont’s governor has been consistent from the start

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, has been perhaps Trump’s most consistent GOP critic on this issue, repeating some version of the same warning through each stage of the standoff.

In July, Scott said: “My feelings on punitive tariffs imposed on Canada have not changed over the last two years and are simply a bad idea that will lead to increased costs on Vermonters.”

When the administration briefly paused the tariffs in mid-August, Scott called it a hopeful sign while noting that Vermont still had “a long ways to go to rebuild this relationship with our friends in the north.”

When the pause expired and the tariffs took effect anyway, Scott’s tone became sharper. “The Trump tariffs are basically taxes—they raise costs for families, farmers and employers on both sides of the border and strain a relationship that has made both countries stronger and more secure,” he said in a statement in late August.

Vermont’s exposure helps explain his persistence. Canada is Vermont’s largest export market by a wide margin, accounting for 31% of the state’s total goods exports in 2025—more than double its next-largest market, according to the U.S. Trade Representative. That makes the state’s business community especially sensitive to any prolonged uncertainty, even before retaliation starts to bite.

Michigan’s governor and the Big Three close ranks

No governor has been louder than Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who has criticized the tariffs since shortly after they were first imposed in February 2025 and has sharpened her rhetoric as the dispute stretched on for roughly a year and a half.

“It is a blunt tool. You can’t just pull out the tariff hammer to swing at every problem without a clear defined end-goal,” Whitmer said in an April 2025 speech, warning that tariffs risked economic “paralysis.” In an October 2025 keynote address in Canada, she said tariffs put 1.2 million Michigan jobs at risk, citing the additional 25% tariff already in place on foreign-made auto parts.

Whitmer renewed her criticism this week after talks collapsed, posting on X on Aug. 22 that Michigan residents were “uniquely impacted by DC Republicans’ ongoing, chaotic tariff wars with Canada,” and that the tariffs amounted to “a tax hike on Michigan families and businesses by raising prices at the grocery store and the gas pump.”

Detroit’s automakers have made similar arguments largely through industry channels and public disclosures. Canada has tightened its own countermeasures against U.S.-based automakers that scaled back Canadian production, cutting the tariff-free import quota for Stellantis by 50% and for GM by 24.2%. Trump has since announced a 50% U.S. tariff on Canadian vehicles, trucks, auto parts, and steel set to take effect Jan. 1, 2027, an increase from the current 25% rate.

Ford and General Motors declined to comment when contacted by Fortune.

Carney used remarks over the weekend to frame the dispute more starkly than at any previous point, saying the country was “at war” with the U.S. economically. Greer has continued to defend the administration’s account publicly, saying Canada introduced new demands and withdrew other commitments in the final hours before the deal collapsed.

The common thread linking Augusta, Montpelier, and Lansing is that none of this was requested by the states most exposed to it—and officials in all three states, across party lines, have been saying so since the fight began. What has changed is the tone. Collins, Scott, and Whitmer spent much of the past year and a half framing their objections as warnings. This week, after a second round of tariffs actually took effect and retaliation is now set for Sept. 8, all three sounded less like they were warning about a risk and more like they were describing a loss already sustained.

For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com