The Port of Duluth-Superior is feeling the strain of the U.S.-Canada trade war. Vessel traffic at the port was down 23 percent through August compared with a year earlier, according to data provided by the port to Bloomberg News. Visits by U.S.-flagged ships fell about 19 percent, while Canadian carrier arrivals dropped 37 percent, the port’s data show.
Port Authority Executive Director Kevin Beardsley told the Duluth News Tribune that nearly every cargo category at the port is down, driven in part by weaker exports to Canada and changing steel-making processes and trade policies. Iron ore, mined nearby in Minnesota’s richest ranges and long the port’s signature cargo, declined by roughly 2.5 million tons last year, Beardsley said. Chamber of Marine Commerce President Josh Juel, also speaking to the News Tribune, attributed part of that iron ore decline to a Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario mill’s shift from blast furnaces to electric arc furnaces, saying the trade dispute itself has been “a little less acute” in Duluth.
The dispute may become more relevant once Nashwauk, Minn.-based Mesabi Metallics begins producing DR-grade pellets that, after converting to DRI or HRI, are to be used in electric arc furnaces. That’s if it plans to ship its pellets through Duluth-Superior as much as the range historically has. Minnesota Buisiness is unaware of its transportation plans and the company did not respond to a request for coment. One of its recent news releases says pellet production should begin next month (“later in the third quarter”). Mesabi is Minnesota’s first new iron mine in 50 years. It’s important to the Range’s economy because of the 1,500+construction workers on site today and the 350 direct and hundreds more indirect jobs it will support once operational.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports domestic iron ore shipments from Duluth-Superior are running about 40 percent below the 2025 pace, and that U.S. tariffs on steel have hit Canada’s steel sector hard. This affects an important albeit smaller portion of Minnesota’s economy than it was 50 years ago. Iron ore mined on the Iron Range has remained one of northern Minnesota’s biggest exports, and much of it moves through Duluth-Superior on its way to steel mills.
That flow has hit turbulence over the past year, driven by two separate forces: Cleveland-Cliffs’ decision to indefinitely idle its Minorca Mine and partially idle Hibbing Taconite, putting roughly 600 Iron Range miners out of work, and the trade war with Canada, which has cut into iron ore exports to Canadian steel mills. Together, they helped drive iron ore shipments through the Duluth-Superior port down nearly 15 percent in 2025, from 19.4 million tons to 16.5 million tons, contributing to the port’s lowest total tonnage since 1938. When shipments slow like that, it ripples back through mining jobs, rail traffic, and the businesses in Duluth and the Range that depend on port activity. As of a 2022 Duluth Seaway Port Authority estimate, maritime shipping through the port supported roughly 7,000 jobs and $1.6 billion in regional economic activity.
For business owners more broadly statewide, the slowdown is a signal that costs and supply chains tied to Canada may keep shifting unpredictably as long as the tariff dispute continues. Companies that buy or sell goods connected to the Great Lakes trade route, even indirectly, could see price swings or delivery disruptions.
The strain extends across the Great Lakes basin, a region so economically intertwined it would rank as the world’s third-largest economy (roughly $6 trillion in output) if it were its own country, according to Bloomberg. About two-fifths of the U.S.-Canada border runs across water, and roughly 200 million tons of cargo including coal, grain, iron ore, limestone, salt, sand and stone still move annually across the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway, compared with about 1.5 billion tons hauled yearly by American railroads, Bloomberg reported.
