Comment by justonceokay
4 days ago
It’s a complete sea change. I feel Canada only set tariffs on cars out of some deference to the US auto industry. I don’t want to use slippery slope thinking, but this to me smells like rolling out a Canadian auto market that is not dependent on the US.
For the average family, being able to spend significantly less on a car is a big deal.
Keep in mind that the US auto industry is also very much a Canadian one. A lot of Big Three stuff happens across the border in Ontario.
But all the policy support that would have let North American automakers build up a competitive position with China is gone, so this is more about just acknowledging reality now.
> Keep in mind that the US auto industry is also very much a Canadian one.
As someone who's worked in the auto industry (in Canada) I have to 'hard disagree.' The big three have proven time and time again that we (Canadians) are second-class citizens when it comes to how they operate the facilities built here. Even before any of this nonsensical tariff nonsense, billions in government money has been given to the likes of Stellantis and GM over the years in an effort to keep jobs in Canada, with them putting in the bare-minimum effort to satisfy people in the short-term and thanking us by continuing their movement of production out of the country. Instead of trying to talk the president down from his pointlessly harmful tariffs, or doing what Toyota/Honda have done in pivoting to building worldwide models beside the domestic ones, the big three are gleefully taking the opportunity to expedite the closure or downsizing of facilities here.
Outside of the chuds who 'need' a pickup truck to satisfy their fragile ego, sales of "American" vehicles are starting to drop, with buyers choosing domestically-produced where possible (like the Toyota Rav4, Lexus NX/RX, or Honda Civic/CR-V).[0]
[0]: https://ca.investing.com/news/economy-news/market-share-of-u...
> billions in government money has been given to the likes of Stellantis and GM over the years in an effort to keep jobs in Canada, with them putting in the bare-minimum effort
You could replace "Canada" with the "United States" and it's equally true. They aren't treating you any different than us.
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Hey now, I bought a Mexican-made pickup.
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I think that was true up until last year. Clearly the new administration wants nothing to do with Canada except extract.
Yeah there was never any competing with china, our industry just relies on our market using different values to purchase a car.
It’s tough to convince most price-inelastic people they shouldn’t buy a car that is 1/2 price, even if it has fewer features.
Edit: to be clear I meant that the US did not compete, not that they could not compete
> Yeah thee was never any competing with china, our industry just relies on our market using different values to purchase a car.
This is patently false. The US could have competed with China if it had maintained investments spinning up battery manufacturing and downstream systems to build EVs at scale, while subsidizing EVs (fossil fuels are subsidized to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars per year [1]) and increasing taxes on combustion mobility. The US picked legacy automaker profits and fossil fuel interests instead, simply out of lack of will and short term optimization over long term success.
China is building under the same rules of physics as everyone else. You can choose not to, but that is a choice.
(I believe in climate change, so I am thrilled China is going to steamroll fossil fuel incumbents out of self interest [2] [3], regardless of negative second order effects; every 24 months of Chinese EV production destroys 1M barrels/day of global oil consumption at current production rates, as of this comment)
[1] https://www.imf.org/en/topics/climate-change/energy-subsidie...
[2] https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e...
[3] https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales
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I remember how popular the Yugo was, and then the Geo metro. Nobody wants good cars, they want cheap transportation.
The expensive cars sell well in the us - customers are not that price inelastic. Those who are prefer a used car with all the high priced features of 5 years ago to a new car with no options
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It was. Then the U.S. turned into whatever the hell you call all that.
Now we have U.S. automakers who are derefential to the current regime's leader and are pulling out. The Federal and Ontario government both tried to somehow make them happy, but you can't make that kind of monster happy. So it's time to move on.
Big auto style auto manufacturing, with American-style union relations and a messy web of parts suppliers was never going to be globally competitive. GM and Ford deserve to go bankrupt with their current backwards practices.
> the US auto industry is also very much a Canadian one
Trump's message is loud and clear. The Canadian Prime Minister has said, "the past relationship with the US is over."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y41z4351qo
The US President: "US does not need cars made in Canada; free trade deal is irrelevant"
US Ambassador: "US does not need Canada":
It was about the mess around Huawei exec if I recall correctly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_case_of_Meng_Wanzh...
> ...smells like rolling out a Canadian auto market that is not dependent on the US.
Feels like being dependent on both the Chinese _and_ the Americans to me, which doesn't exactly feel like a win.
It'll be interesting to see how the Chinese EVs compete "fairly" in Canada. North America has had a lack of choice in automobiles at least as long as I can remember. There are so many cars that are available in Europe or Asia that I wish were available here. But at the same time consumer choices are also very different. So will be interesting to see what the uptake of Chinese EVs are like.
> I feel Canada only set tariffs on cars out of some deference to the US auto industry
That is exactly what they did.
https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/electric-vehicl...
> The tariffs follow a May announcement by U.S. President Joe Biden of 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese-made EVs.
> Trudeau said on Sunday night that he had discussed China and other national geopolitical issues with U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan.
> smells like rolling out a Canadian auto market that is not dependent on the US
The last federal election was almost entirely decided by which leader made the best pitch to Canadians on who would be better equipped to handle Donald Trump and to make the economy less dependent on the USA as a whole.
Nothing to do with “unfair, non-market policies and practices […] and China’s intentional, state-directed policy of overcapacity and lack of rigorous labour and environmental standards”? I suppose that doesn’t even register anymore to the average selectively outraged parochial Canadian.
[0] https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2024/08/can...
You'd be surprised the stink people can put up with when you have a leader to the south of us that is engaged in the kind of regressive behaviour that he/his administration is.
Not that I'm condoning this at all, I think China is a very concerning actor on the world stage. But I can certainly understand the mindset of many Canadians to reflexively seek out alternatives to more USA interdependence, short sighted as some of that may be.
Using the government propaganda press release is certainly a choice.
China has been engaging in "unfair, non-market policies and practices and intentional, state-directed policy of overcapacity and lack of rigorous labour and environmental standards" for decades, but Canada only changed their minds when Biden told them to.
"You know, there’s a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say ‘we need to go green fastest…we need to start investing in solar" -- Justin Trudeau
Yeah, I'm sure he did it because he gives a fsck about human rights and fair markets.
It can, and likely was, both.
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