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Originally published in the Toronto Star April 2, 2025
Lana Payne
U.S. President Donald Trump stumbling his way through a recent media conference was indicative of how little he knows about an industry he claims to want to protect.
From the beginning Trump’s tariff schemes for the North American auto industry have been riddled with reasons baked in half-truths and out-right fabrications and misinformation.
The tariff policy he unleashed, set to take effect on April 3, is very serious, and will have real consequences for the industry in North America. For Canadian and American autoworkers, it’s a job-killer.
Trump’s plan is to add a 25% tariff on all cars, trucks and auto parts exported to the United States. This includes tariffs on Canadian-made vehicles, with a reduced rate on the value of U.S. content in those vehicles.
That Trump has lumped Canada into a tariff scheme with other foreign nations is simply absurd. He’s threatening to upend a tightly integrated – and perfectly balanced – trade relationship, between our two countries. In 2024, for instance, Canada bought $76 billion worth of cars and parts and sold $72 billion to the United States.
The reality is tariffs will drive up the price of new vehicles, with economists predicting an average cost increase anywhere from $3,000 to $12,000 in the U.S. Forecasts show a significant slowdown in annual U.S. vehicles sales that will, in turn, slowdown vehicle production putting autoworkers on both side of the border out of work.
Trump clearly doesn’t understand that the Canadian and American auto industries are deeply intertwined. There’s a long history to this, dating back to the 1960s, following the formation of the Canada-U.S. Auto Pact – a trade agreement that required automakers, essentially, to build where they sell. In Canada, automakers usually sell about 2 million vehicles per year but, today, build far less than that – about 1.3 million vehicles in 2024.
The Auto Pact gave the U.S. what it wanted – the beginnings of a free trade relationship with Canada. U.S. automakers became dominant players in the Canadian industry, and built a shared supply chain that helped build new factories and grow jobs, on both sides of the border. That was all dismantled when the Auto Pact died in 2001, along with the concept of proportional production.
Trump complains that U.S. auto jobs have been stolen and suggests Canada had a hand in taking them.
The fact is that Canada has lost a greater share of North American auto production than the U.S. That’s certainly been the case over the last ten years, while the U.S. share of production has held steady.
Trump must understand that Canada has been building cars and trucks long before the U.S. was our main trading partner.
Our jobs are not his to claim.
If anything, the U.S. – itself – is the source of the problems facing autoworkers.
Low-wage, so-called Right to Work Southern states have been a magnet for new auto investment. These Southern states pride themselves on attacking unions and keeping wages artificially low. These and other state subsidies have driven auto investment away from Canada and driven down industry wages – hurting autoworkers in the process.
Canada has an obligation to guard its auto industry and its workers against unprovoked and unjustified U.S. trade attacks. We expect governments to step up in this fight.
Our union is ready for it, that’s for certain.
Workplace leadership in the union have committed to do whatever is necessary to keep production in Canada, and to advocate for a permanent, fair-trade arrangement within North America.
Autoworkers are prepared to fight for their jobs. They are prepared to fight for a strong Canadian economy, arm-in-arm with Canadian steelworkers, aluminum workers, forestry workers and others.
Trump has convinced himself he is winning. That his bludgeoning tariff agenda targeting Canada will be a success.
As layoffs start to mount, markets tank and investments dry up on both sides of the border, Trump will finally have to face the fact that attacking Canada – and Canadian autoworkers – was not only the wrong move, it was also the lynchpin in a Trump-made recession.
