The head of a union representing more than 20,000 Canadian auto workers sounded the alarm on how Canada has entered an “economic war” with the US following the rollout of a 25% tariff on imported vehicles that she believes is designed to “steal jobs from our country.”
Unifor National President, Lana Payne, took to CP24 Breakfast last Thursday to air her grievances over the latest update in a steady stream of tariff threats made by President Trump.
“We are in an economic war right now with our closest neighbour," Payne said. "This is an attempt by the US president to steal jobs from our country and to have production shifted from Canada to United States."
Trump announced the new tariff on Wednesday afternoon, though it will not formally take effect until April 3.
“We have no choice but to push back and to squeeze ourselves and play hardball in order to make sure we are protecting every single auto job; not just for today but into the future,” Payne added.
The potential to shudder Canadian auto assembly lines
Auto industry officials are sounding the alarm on how this tariff could have potentially devastating consequences on the North American auto industry, with the power to prompt some assembly lines to stop production all together.
Because of the nature of international border crossings during the manufacturing process, Canada will not deal with the negative effects of this decision in isolation.
"It is not only Canadian auto workers jobs who are at risk here. American workers will be hurt by this too,” Payne said.
While Trump intends to bring more auto manufacturing jobs into the US with this surtax, so far, GM and other manufacturers have not explicitly indicated any intention to scale back Canadian operations at this point.
Union plans emergency meeting
More than 100,000 Ontarians are currently employed in the auto assembly and parts manufacturing sectors, per the Ontario government.
This includes more than 3,000 employees, 200 of which are represented by Unifor Local 222, who work at an Oshawa-based General Motors assembly plant.
In response to this latest development in an unprecedented trade war, workers at this plant are also planning to stage a rally to draw attention to their concerns.
As a result, Unifor Local 222 is convening an emergency meeting with other union representatives to discuss how to respond to the tariff — Payne is expected to be in attendance.
“We are calling everyone down here to an emergency tariff meeting,” Local 222 President, Jeff Gray, told CP24 last Thursday.
“[GM] are not taking one piece of equipment out of our plants. We are going to react if that is the case.”
Calling the tariff “malicious,” Gray emphasized how vehicles and parts sometimes cross the border six to nine times before being assembled into a final product.
“Our members… are sick of being antagonized by Donald Trump,” he said. “We fought for these jobs for the last 90 years here in Oshawa. We fought for them through collective bargaining and we paid financial and emotional prices. These jobs aren’t going anywhere.”
Just moments after news of the tariffs broke, Ontario Premier, Doug Ford, also urged Prime Minister Mark Carney to target American-made cars in response.
“We either roll over as a country and [Trump] runs us over 15 times to get what he wants, or we feel a little bit of pain and we fight like we’ve never fought before,” he said.
This article "We are in an economic war right now": Canadian auto union braces for impact of newly-announced 25% tariffs on all vehicle imports into the US originally appeared on Money.ca
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