‘Dumbfounded and disgusted’: Canada’s car capital grapples with Trump tariffs

A long-awaited tariff announcement from U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday spurred confusion and concern in Canada’s automotive capital.

The president, in a lengthy Rose Garden address at the White House, provided some relief to Canada by leaving it out of a list of nations facing new reciprocal tariffs from the U.S.

But the Trump administration is maintaining previously announced tariffs affecting Canada, including up to 25 per cent levies on assembled vehicles and some automotive parts. 

“I’m dumbfounded and disgusted at the same time, because we’re talking about people’s livelihoods on the line,” said John D’Agnolo, president of Unifor Local 200.

D’Agnolo’s nearly 2,000 members build Ford’s V8 engines, which are shipped to the U.S. to be put into trucks and Mustangs. 

The White House has said that engines are among the “key automobile parts” subject to a 25 per cent tariff starting this week. However, parts that comply with the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) are tariff-free, until the administration “establishes a process to apply tariffs to their non-U.S. content.” 

D’Agnolo said many of the parts that go into the engines are American-made, but others come from Canada, China and other countries. 

“This is why it’s so confusing,” D’Agnolo said. 

D’Agnolo said that if a 25 per cent tariff applies to the engines his workers build, it would cost the company an extra $75,000 for each trailer load of engines it sends across the border.

“That will raise the price of these vehicles substantially, and then no one will buy them,” he said. “It’s going to destroy a company that’s one of the most American companies, period.”

D’Agnolo and industry experts have warned that due to North America’s deeply integrated automotive supply chains, tariffs could hurt workers on both sides of the border. 

Parts can cross the border a half-dozen times before final assembly, meaning that any U.S. tariffs – as well as Canadian or Mexican counter-tariffs – would raise costs significantly, both for manufacturers and consumers. 

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Windsor-Essex is home to more than 52,000 manufacturing workers, according to employment non-profit Workforce Windsor-Essex – thousands of whom work in the automotive industry.

Many of them build Pacifica minivans at Stellantis’ Windsor assembly plant. Those vehicles are set to be hit by Trump’s tariffs, but by how much will depend on how many of the thousands of parts in the vehicle are not made in the U.S.

The White House has said companies importing vehicles under CUSMA “will be given the opportunity to certify their U.S. content and systems will be implemented such that the 25 per cent tariff will only apply to the value of their non-U.S. content.”

Still, workers are already feeling the impact.

Just hours after Trump’s announcement, Unifor Local 444, which represents employees at the plant, announced that Stellantis will be halting production for two weeks starting on April 7, “with more changes to the schedule expected in the coming weeks.”

“While we had heard rumours of potential downtime, the company said there are multiple factors at play, with the primary driver behind the final decision being this afternoon’s announcement from US President Donald Trump of the U.S. tariffs,” the union said. 

Earlier in the day, Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens said he was still “trying to decode everything that has been released,” but that Trump’s announcement seemed “far better than any of us had anticipated.”

Dilkens said he understood Windsorites’ anxiety around the tariffs, though.

“I’ve been on pins and needles for this community for the better part of two months, so I can understand exactly how people are feeling, and we’ve been rattling every cage and beating every drum that we can to try and make sure that there is an understanding by the president of the United States that a tariff on Canada is a tax to U.S. consumers,” he said. 

“It appears on the face of it today that there is an understanding of that so I’m pleasantly surprised by what I’ve heard the president say … But to my fellow Windsorites, we’re all in this together.”

D’Agnolo said he’ll be telling his members to avoid unnecessary spending at the moment.

“I’ve talked about the recession time in ’08, but the cost of living wasn’t even close to what it is today,” he said. “These poor workers are going to be suffering and it breaks my heart.

“So I’ll just tell the people, listen, we’ll continue to put out a good quality product, be productive, do what we can to support, show that we are the best workforce in the world and hopefully we can get through this.”