‘Disastrous’: Unifor president on potential impacts of U.S. auto tariffs

The national president of Unifor has described the potential impacts of U.S. President Donald Trump’s early April 25 per cent tariffs on automobiles and auto parts from Canada as “disastrous”.

It comes as other auto industry experts react to the latest tariff threat.

“They will be disastrous and destructive for jobs in Canada. We have said this from the beginning,” says Lana Payne, Unifor president.

Trump’s new tariffs on Canada’s auto sector are raising familiar concerns for Canada’s largest private sector union.

“Of course there is a lot of anxiety on the shop floor. Every single day we are under a litany of attacks from south of the border,” says Payne.

Payne stresses that the government and companies need to invest in Canadian workers to battle Trump’s latest tariff threats.

“These are Canadian jobs, we are going to defend them with everything we have, and we expect our governments to also stand up and defend these jobs,” she adds.

In Ontario alone there are several assembly plants and auto manufacturers — including the Ford plant in Oakville and the General Motors plant in St. Catharines.

Payne says they’re determined to save their plants and jobs.

One of the big automotive manufacturers in southern Ontario is Toyotetsu in Simcoe. CHCH spoke with two of the employees who did not want to appear on camera, but they say things are currently business as usual.

Industry experts say it will probably take until the end of April to see any impacts.

“I suspect that no company will be quick off the mark to make a definitive statement,” says Grieg Mordue, an associate professor in the Faculty of Engineering at McMaster University.

Mordue says he doesn’t expect to see companies making radical moves right now because they will “wait for more information to come forward and they will be reluctant to make radical adjustments to their supply chain”.

A detail in the tariff announcement is that automobiles imported under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) will only be tariffed on the value of content not made in the United States.

“…essentially saying that only the non-U.S. component of the vehicle will be tariffed,” says David Adams, Global Automakers of Canada.

A post by the president of the automotive parts manufacturers association illustrates how many parts of a single rear suspension can come from different countries. It shows seven parts coming from the U.S., six from Canada and three from Mexico, illustrating just how integrated the automotive industry is in North America.

“We don’t build things in Canada for the U.S., or vice versa. We’re building things together — parts and components for both markets, so if we’re applying a tariff in one country it’s going to come back and bite in both countries from a price impact,” says Adams.