Auto Association president says plants 'will close within a week' thanks to Trump tariffs

On Tuesday morning, March 4, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his country is enacting a 25 percent tariff on goods imported into Canada from the United States. This is in response to a 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods that was ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump and went into effect that same day.

Trudeau declared, "To my fellow Canadians, I won't sugarcoat it: this is going to be tough."

According to Trudeau, $155 billion worth of U.S. goods imported into Canada will be subject to the new 25 percent tariff.

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Trump's tariffs on Canada, Mexico and Mainline China will, according to economists, make a wide range of goods more expensive — from electronics to cars. And according to Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, assembly plants in both Ontario, Canada and the midwestern United States may close because of the U.S. president's tariff policy.

In an interview with Canada's CTV News, Volpe warned, "If those tariffs come in on cars, what we learned in 2020 — when the pandemic hit and in 2022 when the Ambassador Bridge was closed — is you can't make the cars without all the parts. So, if you are making six or seven per cent (profit) and your customer says you have to pay a 25 per cent surtax on what you are shipping, you are not going to ship. And if you don't ship it, there isn't an alternative."

Volpe continued, "(Manufacturers) can't go buy a crank shaft or car seats at a Walmart. So, the industry, like it did in those first two incidents, will close within a week and that includes Ontario and Michigan all the way down to Kentucky, Alabama and Texas."

Volpe warned that a trade war between the U.S. and Canada will be painful for both countries.

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The Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association president told CTV, "When the Ambassador Bridge closed in Canada, it meant that 100,000 or so people were on temporary layoff. We have been prepared for this from Day One. We thought it was going to happen on January 31. So, we are prepared in so much as you can be prepared for a punch that you know is coming to your face."

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Read the full CTV News article at this link.