NDP MPs call for federal action
This would have a devastating impact on our region and we need to have a plan.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat of new tariffs on automotive sector imports requires Canadian action now to head off the “devastating ” consequences to the Windsor-Essex region, the area’s trio of NDP MPs declared Monday. “We don’t have the luxury of thinking this won’t happen,” Essex MP Tracey Ramsey said at a riverfront news conference held beneath the Great Canadian Flag, with the Detroit skyline as a backdrop. In a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dated that day, she, Windsor West’s Brian Masse and Windsor-Tecumseh MP Cheryl Hardcastle warn that the new U.S. tariffs would cause large automotive manufacturers to pull their plants out of Canada “entirely” and result in more than 100,000 permanent job losses. Ontario would be plunged into recession and Windsor-Essex would be hardest hit, they said. “This would have a devastating impact on our region and we need to have a plan,” said Ramsey, the NDP’s international trade critic, who called on the Liberal government to do “everything in its power” to prevent the U.S. from imposing illegal tariffs on the auto industry.
Hardcastle said the threatened auto tariffs would put local people out of work, “creating an economic crisis that will hurt families” locally and across Canada. “We will have neighbours, family members suffer, and it will trickle,” she said. “We’re going to feel that impact.” The MPs are holding meetings Thursday at the Ciociaro Club to hear from industry stakeholders from noon to 2 p.m. and from the public from 6 to 8 p.m. They want to hear about the impacts auto tariffs would have on businesses and people and solicit ideas to combat them. They’re also asking people to write the prime minister about their concerns and how they’d be affected by the tariffs. The address is: The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, House of Commons, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A6, and you don’t need a stamp. You can also email him at justin.trudeau@parl.gc.ca. “For us, we cannot afford here in Windsor-Essex to sit back and wait for these auto tariffs to be placed on us,” said Ramsey.
“We need to take action now and that’s what we’re calling on the government to do.”
On July 1, the Canadian government imposed retaliatory tariffs in response to U.S. tariffs placed on Canadian steel and aluminum. But this “tit-for-tat” trade war won’t sustain sectors like auto, she said, and the $2-billion package announced by Ottawa to compensate affected industries won’t go far if auto tariffs are imposed. Masse said the auto tariffs are a very real and serious threat, but they’re only the latest blow to the Canadian auto industry, which he claims the government has paid little attention to.
Good auto jobs and investment already took a big hit under NAFTA and the resulting disappearance of the Auto Pact, the 1960s deal between Canada and the U.S. that brought automotive prosperity.
“We’ve already done our part,” said Masse, hearkening to a time when Canada was ranked fourth in the world in auto assembly and manufacturing. It’s now dropped to eighth or ninth, he said, and is slipping into a trade deficit situation with the U.S. The MPs’ letter reminds Trudeau of the longstanding call for a National Auto Strategy.
“I do understand we’re dealing with a very unpredictable president, but the reality is we have a very predictable industry that needs a strategy,” Masse said, referring to the need for a plan that addresses research, engineering and future technologies. Canada should implement the strategy instead of sitting back and waiting for tariffs, he said, citing local examples of companies waiting for one to two years for word about government-backed loans to help them invest. Meanwhile, the government loaned Volkswagen US$400 million, even though it has no assembly operations here. “That type of nonsense has to stop,” Masse said.