OSHAWA, Canada − Canada’s embattled auto workers are bracing for impact.
President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian cars hang like storm clouds over blue collar towns as rumors spread of coming layoffs and plant closures and economists warn higher tariffs could demolish the country’s auto industry.
“We’re holding our breath,” said Jeff Gray, president of Unifor Local 222, a union representing 5,000 workers and suppliers in Oshawa, home to a General Motors assembly plant. “We have earned these jobs. These are not Donald Trump’s jobs to take.”
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Crisis looms over Canadian auto towns
Trump’s tariffs have stirred a fresh patriotism and national identity across Canada. On April 28, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party won a comeback election on a tide of anti-Trump sentiment.
For the country’s auto workers, that nationalism has become especially poignant as the industry stares down the barrel of catastrophe.
Auto assembly has been the beating heart of Oshawa, a small city of 185,000 an hour’s drive from Toronto, for over a century.
Now, the windows of houses around the city are plastered with Canadian flags. A massive Canadian flag flies over a parking lot adjacent to the city’s Walmart.
Chris Waugh, Local 222’s chairperson and a 23-year worker at the plant, said Oshawa autoworkers were keeping the focus on their daily work in the face of possible job losses.
“They’re mad, angry,” Waugh said. “There’s fear. They have mortgages, they have bills.”
A spokesperson for GM did not return a request for comment.
Trump on the offensive
Trump saddled all imported cars with a 25% tariff in early April. Carney, a former banker who took office earlier this year, hit back with a 25% tariff on U.S.-imported cars the next day.
On April 29, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed Trump will soon sign an executive order aimed at providing some relief to U.S. automakers, but the White House has yet to enact a pause on the additional 25% tariff on auto parts that’s set to take effect May 3.
Trump floated raising tariffs on Canadian cars even higher.
“I really don’t want cars from Canada,” Trump said in the Oval Office on April 23. Six days later, he U.S. President signed an order to soften the blow of his auto tariffs with a mix of credits and relief for U.S. automoakers from other levies on materials.
Economists say Canada’s auto industry − with 125,000 workers − is on the verge of collapse.
“It’s not clear that the industry will survive in Canada,” said Douglas Porter, chief economist at BMO Financial Group.
Plant shutdown sparks panic
For other Canadian auto workers, the fear became a reality. Earlier this month, Stellantis, which makes Jeeps, Dodges and Rams, among other brands, temporarily shut down a plant in Windsor in response to Trump’s tariffs. Windsor is directly across the border from Detroit in Ontario.
After a 2-week closure, employees at the plant returned to work April 21, Stellantis spokesperson Ann Marie Fortunate said.
Stellantis is “continuing to assess the medium- and long-term effects of these tariffs on our operations, but also have decided to take some immediate actions, including temporarily pausing production at some of our Canadian and Mexican assembly plants,” Antonio Filosa, the company’s chief operating officer, wrote in an April 3 letter to employees.
Although workers have their paychecks back, their anxiety has not faded, said Emile Nabbout, president of Unifor Local 195, which represents thousands of workers at the plant.
“It’s impacting their livelihood,” Nabbout said. “People really worry about how they’re going to pay their bills.” Nabbout said 4,300 workers at the plant were affected.
The plant’s workers “don’t know if this is one-time deal. They don’t know if this is going to happen again,” he said. “Nobody knows.”
Will ‘buy Canadian’ save the auto industry?
Union leaders said they hoped an internal redirection could save Canada’s auto industry.
With around 1.8 million cars sold in Canada last year, the country’s internal auto market is “substantial,” according to Porter.
Still, “it’s debatable whether it’s a large enough market for a factory to continue producing just for the Canadian market,” he said.
By comparison, nearly 16 million cars were sold in the U.S. in 2024.
The U.S. is, by far, the biggest market for Canada’s auto factories. Last year, Canada exported $28 billion worth of cars to the U.S. − 94% of its total annual auto exports.
Trump’s tariffs are a traumatic blow for an industry that has enjoyed free trade across the U.S.-Canada border for decades.
After a 1965 U.S.-Canada agreement removed duties on most auto parts, the car industry enjoyed easy trade. That agreement was canceled in 2001, but the two country’s auto industries had already become closely intertwined.
Rumors and stress
Andrea Penhale said layoffs at the GM plant in Oshawa could devastate her family.
Penhale, a 48-year-old behavioral analyst, said her son-in-law, who works at the plant, had heard rumors that the plant might lay off workers on the night shift.
“I don’t think he knows what he might be in for,” she said.
Stacey Welsh, a 41-year-old Oshawa native, said some of her friends in the auto industry had been laid off in the past due to parts shortages. With the new trade war, “they don’t know if the parts are going to come in,” she said.
“They’re really scared. They’re scared if their jobs are still going to be there.”
‘Not one piece of equipment is going to leave’
Union leaders Gray and Waugh said they’re used to fighting for auto workers’ jobs. General Motors has moved to lay off Oshawa employees in the past.
The Oshawa union faced crisis beginning in 2018, when General Motors furloughed thousands of workers and threatened to close the plant. A May 2019 agreement between the company and the union kept the plant running – but in slimmed-down form.
This time, the threat to Canada’s auto workers stems from international politics. Regardless, Gray said, the union won’t allow General Motors to move jobs out of Oshawa.
“It’s clean and simple,” Gray said. “Once those jobs leave, they’re never coming back, so we’re not going to allow them to leave.”
“Not one piece of equipment is going to leave that plant,” Waugh said.
Oshawa auto workers held an “Elbows Up” march last month. The slogan has become a rallying cry for Canada to defend against Trump’s tariffs and threats to make Canada a “51st state.” Windsor auto workers also held a mass “Elbows Up” rally on April 26.
“We may have to fight. That’s our rallying cry,” Gray said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump threatens to hike Canadian car tariffs as auto industry roils
