Trucks that wear car parts worth about $ 300 million daily through the Windsor Bridge, Ontario, to Detroit, are still rolling as usual. But after the decision of President Trump to impose 25 percent of tariffs to most of the Canadian export categories, the mood in Windsor, as well as the whole Canada, was transformed.
The move of Mr. Trump set a sense of economic anxiety and anger among Canadians about how to treat their neighbor, ally and best customer. Most still confuse Mr. Trump’s motivation and tariff goals, as well as his comments about the annexation of Canada as 51 countries.
And as they turned their attention to getting potentially crippled tariffs, and a 10 -pointed levy on Canadian oil and gas and some minerals, built -in, politicians, business people and ordinary Canadians say that the relationship between the two countries will never return to what it used to be.
Flavio Volpe, head of Canadian car manufacturer trade, said his members could start closing the factories in days and feels betrayed by the United States.
“We have built two societies on the same values,” said Mr. Volpe, who is also a member of Prime Minister Justin Trudeauuu Relations Council with Canada-US. “The man in the White House made a turn and drove right over us.”
Mr. Trudeau and anxious business leaders across Canada said the focus of their country must end as quickly as possible with tariffs.
Most project predictions that the Canadian economy dependent on exports will be sent to a recessionalthough they differ in time and its initial seriousness.
“We have a limited experience for this size of trade shock,” the Royal Bank of Canada, the largest financial institution in the country, said this week. Some Canadians returned to comparison with Smoot-Hawley in 1930, which increased the average American import duty to a whopping 59.1 percent. Many economists believe that they have worsened great depression, but the economies of the two countries were less integrated at that time.
In addition to oil and gas, the largest Canadian export sector is the auto industry. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump suggested that the only output of the tariff for the sector was moving all his production to the United States. In addition to leaving qualified labor, which would require billions of dollars of new investments.
Historically speaking, car trade was mostly balanced between the United States and Canada. Parts are often spinning between Canada, the United States and Mexico, sometimes repeatedly exceeding the borders before they are in the vehicles at the sales salon.
Mr. Volpe, from the Association of Automobile Part Manufacturers in Canada, said that, in addition to tariffs, the store remained unchanged on Tuesday, an estimate supported by the usual migration of the trucks on the ambassador bridge.
25 percent of tariffs are paid by importers, whether other parts manufacturers or car manufacturers. Most of the contracts allows the car manufacturer to subtract the tariff that pays when resolving the company account.
Mr. Volpe said these deductions would make the suppliers of parts, which generally have a single -digit profit margin, immediately and deeply unprofitable.
He expects most of his members to cover these losses from their money reserves for about a week. After that, it will be forced to stop the shipments.
“No one will burn his cash reserve for the president of the United States,” he said.
For several parts, car manufacturers usually do not have alternative suppliers, let alone those in the United States. Setting up new suppliers would take time and significant investments. The result, experts say, will be a shortage of parts that quickly cascade into exclusion of assembly lines. Thousands of workers in Canada, the United States and Mexico would remain empty.
Some industries began to walk empty a small number of workers before the tariffs came into force.
Bill Slater, President United Steelworkers Local in Sault you are. Marie, Ontario, said Algoma Steel had released about 20 of his members who were employed on a salary, citing Tariffs. He said the mill was also released by numerous test clockwork.
Truck drivers had a mixed experience. Stephen Laskowski, president of the Trucking Ontario Association, said some had a rise in business while companies moved products to the United States before the tariffs entered into force, while others released drivers because customers canceled the shipments.
The Canadian Forestry Industry knows Tariff too well. Special American duties on softwood wood have been returning for decades and were a factor in Canada, seeking a free trade agreement in 1989 with the United States, which was later expanded to Mexico. (Canada has repeatedly failed to get an exemption from the US complaint system for trade that imposes soft wood tariffs.)
But Kurt Niquidet, President of the Council of British Colombia Forest Industries, said the addition of the 25 -festive tariffs “really puts us on the territory of unprecedented territory.”
Wood mills in the western province face a dizzying series of tariffs. This week’s 25 percent tariff is 14.4 percent of the tariff that the US government expects to raise this summer, to more than 27 percent. Then Mr. Trump announced last weekend that he opened an investigation into a tree import result in even more tariffs.
While the United States supplies about 70 percent of their own wood, Mr Niquidet, an economist, said that US forests and mills cannot replace all wood from Canada, nor can they be obtained from other countries.
“There will still be imports from Canada,” he said. “Prices in the United States will increase.” Some Canadian wood mills, however, may not survive a trade attack, he added.
While Mr. Trudeau speculated that Mr. Trump was looking for “complete collapse of the Canadian economy, because he would make us easier for us,” Mr. Volpe said he was not sure it was complicated. “If he looks like he is dismantling the structure of the post -war economy, then he is,” Mr. Volpe said. “What are you going to do with that?” Some Canadians believe that their country is simply used as part of Mr. Trump’s plan to finance significant American tax reduction with tariffs.
Jean Simard, president of the Aluminum Canadian Association, has led a successful battle for the 10 -long tariff on Canadian metal exports Mr Trump brought during his first administration. Now Mr. Simard is trying to refuse the additional tariffs that Mr. Trump has promised to put 25 percent on Tuesday. He said he believed the president say to the world, “This is what I can do to my closest allies – think about what awaits you.”
Mr. Simard added, “It’s an old barbaric approach to war.”
As the tariffs cheered, actions against US goods quickly appeared. Government -owned alcoholic beverages, including Ontario, withdrew to us beer, wine and alcoholic drinks from their shelves, and that province canceled a $ 100 million contract ($ 69 million) with Elona Musk Satellite Service to provide the Internet in rural areas.
Some Canadians are also Demanding that he is not traveling southa decision that may have also been informed by the fall of the Canadian dollar made by tariffs.
Most winter, Lee Miller, retired electrician from Saint John, New Brunswick, would travel to his motor home through a sunny warm country, including Florida.
“As soon as Trump started talking to the tariffs, I said,” No, not going, “said Mr. Miller. After canceling this year’s trip, he plans to enter the United States until Mr. Trump is president. However, this will mean missed visits with friends and family living across the border.
“This is one of those things that separate the families,” he said.
