The Rubber Duck Museum in Pt. Roberts, Wash., is moving because Canadians are no longer coming to the border town. Neil and Krystal King tell NPR’s Scott Simon why.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Mark Carney, the new Canadian prime minister, had a friendly Oval Office meeting earlier this week with President Trump. But the tariffs President Trump began and to which Canada replied in kind are still in effect. Tariffs and anti-American feelings are bruising U.S. businesses that once attracted Canadian shoppers across the border for cheap gas and food. Neil and Krystal King run a novelty shop in Point Roberts, Washington State, that caters to Canadian tourists. They also own The Rubber Duck Museum but say that soon, they will move to Canada. Neil and Krystal King join us now. Thanks so much for being with us.
KRYSTAL KING: Thanks for having us.
NEIL KING: Thank you so much for having us today.
SIMON: Look, we’ll get into tariffs and international relations, but why is there a rubber duck museum?
N KING: Krystal, you got this one.
K KING: Yeah. OK, our town is an exclave. It is attached to Canada, not the U.S. mainland, which makes us obviously very dependent on Canadian tourism for the economy. And since the pandemic border closures, the town’s really been struggling to bring tourism back up, so we wanted to bring in an exhibit that would help attract people here. We’d already had several hundred rubber ducks in the store, and so we decided to lean into that. We discovered there has never been a just rubber duck museum. And I thought that would be a fun venture.
SIMON: Forgive my ignorance. Is there, like, a Mona Lisa of rubber ducks that you have or something of particular historic note?
N KING: One of my favorites is we have a old-school rubber duck from the 1930s that was produced by Seiberling and Disney. And we also have the mold that created it. So it was – it’s so cool and so neat to have.
SIMON: I can’t believe I’ve gotten to this point in my life and not seen it.
K KING: (Laughter).
SIMON: Do tell us about Point Roberts. What’s it like now with this current tension?
N KING: Quiet.
K KING: Quiet.
N KING: Yeah, that’s the best way to kind of describe it. You can feel it in the air. It’s just quiet. There’s no cars on the street right now, and even during Easter weekend, it just felt empty. And usually during those three-day weekends, our town is just bustling.
SIMON: What’s the reason? What do customers tell you, friends?
K KING: We’ve had a lot of regulars and loyal customers reach out to us throughout this whole thing in the last couple of months, and they’re pretty much all saying the exact same thing. They feel very offended by a lot of the rhetoric coming out of the White House right now. They don’t like their sovereignty being threatened. They feel like the only tool they have is boycotting the United States and keeping those tourist dollars out of there.
SIMON: You’re moving?
K KING: We’re not moving our home yet. We’re really hoping to stay in Point Roberts. But the – yeah, the rubber ducks have to move.
SIMON: And I realize they may not have a voice in this, but why do the rubber ducks have to move?
K KING: Pretty much overnight, the entire business model became unsustainable. Nobody is making rubber ducks outside of China. And so, all at once, every single product that we bring in for the museum became more expensive for us. We can’t get rubber ducks in anymore for a price point that makes any kind of sense for anybody.
SIMON: But this is – I mean, this is a big move. I mean, what if suddenly next week the tariffs are rescinded?
N KING: Yeah, it’s just the instability of, you know, waking up every day and going, is it a tariff day or not, just isn’t a sustainable business model for any small business, let alone a small business that is reliant on Canadian tourism.
K KING: And China manufacturing.
SIMON: Will you lose some of the charm by not being in Point Roberts?
K KING: Oh, absolutely. It’s not the step we wanted to take, honestly. We love having our quaint little shop here. It means so much to us. We’ve been invested in staying here, but it’s not a choice between moving the ducks to Canada or keeping them here. It’s a choice between moving to Canada or closing.
SIMON: Krystal King and Neil King run The Rubber Duck Museum that, for the moment, is in Point Roberts, Washington. Thank you both very much for being with us.
K KING: Thank you.
N KING: Thank you.
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