By AFP
February 4, 2025
A car hauler carries Toyota RAV4 vehicles as it enters to cross the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ontario to go to Detroit, Michigan on February 3, 2025 - Copyright AFP GREG BAKER
Ben Simon
The trade war may be on hold, but in a Canadian border city where the unhindered flow of auto parts across the bridge to Detroit supports thousands of jobs, the future remains uncertain.
When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday that punishing US import tariffs threatened by President Donald Trump had been delayed a month, the line of cars waiting to enter Windsor, Ontario was stacked dozens deep.
The build up was heavy for a Monday but not extraordinary, underscoring how lives and the economies in Windsor and Detroit have grown intertwined.
Among those who had just driven across the suspension bridge connecting the cities was Ryan Martin, a 33-year-old automotive engineer, who lives in Canada but crosses daily to work in Michigan.
“I’m relieved for now,” he told AFP through the rolled down window of his black pick-up truck, as he waited to clear Canadian customs.
But, he added, “I think the damage is already done.”
The relationship between the United States and Canada — a close alliance for well over a century that currently involves billions of dollars in daily cross border trade — “is not in a good spot,” said Martin.
“Not as good as it should be.”
– ‘Freaking out’ –
Trump’s pledge to impose a blanket 25 percent tariff on all Canadian imports, which may resurface in a month, pushed national anxiety in Canada to rare heights.
Canada announced retaliatory measures and economists warned the US levees could trigger a recession by mid-year.
Trump has said tariffs were aimed at forcing Canada to counter the cross-border flow of migrants and the powerful and dangerous drug fentanyl.
That argument provoked bewilderment among some Canadians, as Ottawa maintained that less than one percent of fentanyl and undocumented migrants in the United States cross through the northern border.
In Windsor, Trump’s motivation for tariffs likely matters less than their potentially existential impact on the auto industry, which drives the local economy.
“It’s massive,” said John D’Agnolo, who heads a local union representing Ford plant workers.
Ford has been employing people in Windsor for more than 100 years and without auto jobs the city would be plunged into a “huge recession,” he said.
When Trump signed the order on Saturday signalling tariffs would go into force, people believed “cross border trade, especially for the automotive sector, was heading to a dark place,” D’Agnolo said.
Members of his union “were, quite frankly, freaking out.”
D’Agnolo estimated that there are 30,000 individual parts in an average vehicle, some of which cross the US-Canada border multiple times through a manufacturing process that has developed over years to maximize efficiency.
Workers at his plant, for example, make engines for Ford trucks assembled in the United States.
A 25 percent tariff each time Canadian cargo headed into Michigan would cause car companies “a lot of pain,” he said.
“It would be impossible.”
For D’Agnolo, the 30-day pause was obviously welcome but has hardly settled minds in Windsor.
“For now it’s relief, but it gives workers an eye opener,” he said.
His message to union members is “you’re going to have to start saving some money, because we don’t know yet.”
– ‘Four years of not knowing’ –
Krysten Lawton, a health and safety trainer at the Ford plant, is a fourth generation auto worker and her children just joined the industry.
“It’s kind of our bloodline,” the 52-year-old told AFP.
Lawton said she exhaled deeply in relief when news of the tariff pause broke Monday but she was steeling herself for uncertainty which she expects to last throughout Trump’s second term.
“I don’t think we’re going to feel safe for some time. I think it’s going to be four year of not knowing,” she said.
Earlier in her career, she dealt more closely with Ford colleagues in Detroit — relations that were always cordial — and she voiced hope that US-Canada bonds could transcend any fraying caused by the tariff standoff.
“This is just chaos…this is a drive to divide people and I hope that people are smarter than that,” she said.
“We would love for North America to flourish… as a whole.”
With boos and boycotts, Canadians voice displeasure with Trump
By AFP
February 3, 2025
Graffiti calling to boycott American wine is seen at a liquor store in Montreal, Canada, on February 3, 2025 - Copyright AFP ANDREJ IVANOV
Anne-Marie PROVOST
They’re booing the American national anthem, cancelling holidays in the United States, and boycotting American products: Canadians are responding to US President Donald Trump’s tariff threats with anger and patriotic spending.
“What Donald Trump is doing to Canada, I find it completely disgusting,” says Huguette Beaudoin.
Wandering the aisles of a Montreal supermarket, the 80-year-old stops to look closely at the label on a box of onion soup to determine XXif it was made in the United States or not.XX
For her, like many others, buying American products is now out of the question — even if it means going without certain items.
“We have to react,” she says.
Trump, who roared back into the White House this month, had announced sweeping tariffs of 25 percent on Canadian imports to begin Tuesday, accusing Ottawa of not doing enough on illegal immigration and fentanly smuggling.
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday said the US levies would be paused for 30 days after he promised Trump he would tighten the border with the United States, appoint a “Fentanyl Czar” and crack down on money laundering.
But he had initially announced retaliatory tariffs, urged Canadians to buy local and consider vacationing within Canada instead of the United States.
His comments appear to have been taken to heart, with several people in multiple cities who spoke to AFP before the pause was announced saying they would do just that.
Pamela Tennant, who lives in Ontario, had been planning a trip to South Carolina in March but changed her mind, annoyed by the American president’s attacks — including his oft-repeated threat to make Canada the 51st US state.
“I’m afraid that Americans will end up believing what Trump says,” she told AFP. “He considers us a bad neighbor. He tells the whole world that we are bad people and that we have taken advantage of them,” but it is “all lies.”
– Boos –
On social media, lists of American products to boycott began circulating widely.
Several provinces — including Ontario, which sells almost Can$1 billion worth of US booze annually through its government-run retail stores and to 18,000 local restaurants and bars — said they would immediately stop selling American beer, wine and spirits in protest.
“We didn’t start this fight, but we’re going to win this fight,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said on Monday.
The boycott will have an effect on American producers and companies, but Canada remains “a relatively small market” for them, and so it will be “above all symbolic,” commented Julien Frederic Martin, an economics professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM).
On the other hand, Canadian tourists choosing to go elsewhere “could have a significant economic effect” for American states such as Maine, Florida, California and Arizona, according to Lorn Sheehan, a professor who specializes in tourism at Dalhousie University.
The United States is the top vacation destination for Canadians and, in 2023, more than 25 million trips were made to the United States for work, leisure or shopping.
Canadian sports fans have also expressed their anger, booing the US national anthem at a Toronto Raptors’ home NBA game against the Los Angeles Clippers on Sunday.
Boos were also heard during the “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a National Hockey League game on Saturday between the Minnesota Wild and the Ottawa Senators.
“There has always been a latent anti-Americanism in Canada but, with Trump, it has soared,” said Guy Lachapelle, a professor at Concordia University.
The current boycott, he added, is directed “not so much against the United States, but more towards the American president.”
‘Failing marriage’: Canadian border cities dismayed by US trade rift
By AFP
February 2, 2025
The US-Canada rift brought by Trump's tariffs threatens to divide inter-connected border communities. — © AFP Geoff Robins
Canadian border cities were left saddened and angered on Sunday over US President Donald Trump’s move to impose steep tariffs, with the mayor of Sarnia, Ontario likening the rift to a “failing marriage.”
The city of 85,000 across the border from Port Huron, Michigan is an energy hub with 26 transnational oil and gas pipelines.
Residents of both cities for more than a century helped each other out, for example, if a fire broke out. They jointly held hockey tournaments, the last one just two weeks ago.
Their economies are very integrated and personal bonds run deep, Sarnia mayor Mike Bradley told AFP.
“But it all seems to be coming to an end. And it does not appear that we’re going to be able to resurrect that relationship in the future,” he said.
Trump on Saturday signed off on a 25-percent tariff on all Canadian imports except energy, which will see a 10 percent levy.
“There’s just a great sadness,” said Bradly of his community. “The anger is deep.”
“We’ve had squabbles in the past (with the US), but it’s different this time, it has become personal.”
“It’s like a failing marriage. You do everything possible to save the marriage, but in the end, you can’t do it, and so then you deal with the impacts of it,” he said.
Much of the past quarter century saw governments and industry on both sides of the border link a tight web of pipelines and refineries in Canada and the United States.
This interdependence was meant to strengthen continental energy security by reducing reliance on overseas oil.
So it came as a shock to Canadians that Trump would target Canada with tariffs that risk upending cooperation in the energy sector.
Bradley described stopping at a fast-food restaurant on his way home Saturday evening, after the US tariffs were announced, where “instead of the usual talk, there was a half dozen people upset and angry about what was happening.”
He said he has also fielded a flurry of calls from locals demanding that American flags lining Sarnia streets alongside Canada’s Maple Leaf be taken down.
“Those flags were a sign of goodwill and acceptance of our (bilateral) relationship, and now that’s in tatters,” he said, agreeing to remove them. “It’s just symbolism. But I’ve learned from our American friends that symbolism is very important.”
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