A transport truck parked at Stellantis in Windsor, Ont., on April 4. The plant was closed for two weeks in April and will see rolling production cuts and layoffs through to July.Dax Melmer/The Canadian Press
U.S. President Donald Trump says he is using automobile tariffs to put Canada out of the carmaking business.
A look at Ontario’s auto assembly plants shows he does not have far to go.
Since Mr. Trump announced plans to slap tariffs on imported cars – including those from Canada and Mexico – three of Ontario’s eight automotive assembly plants have announced changes that include thousands of layoffs, production cuts and temporary shutdowns. A fourth plant, already down for retooling, paused the refit in a move the union says will extend its closing well into next year.
“We want to make our own cars,” Mr. Trump said on May 6, sitting in the Oval Office next to Prime Minister Mark Carney. “We don’t really want cars from Canada. And we put tariffs on cars from Canada, and at a certain point, it won’t make economic sense for Canada to build those cars.”
Mr. Trump is ignoring the fact that Canadians buy more cars made in U.S. plants by Detroit-based automakers – Ford Motor Co. F-N, General Motors GM-N and Stellantis NV STLA-N – than vice versa. And that those three companies have invested billions of dollars in the North American auto supply chain, which relies on open borders and tariff-free efficiencies.
About 55 per cent of the 17 million vehicles bought in the U.S. in 2023 were assembled there. Fifteen per cent came from Mexico, and just 7 per cent or 8 per cent from Canada, according to Ward’s Automotive and Bank of Montreal.
GM, Ford and Toyota have said the tariffs will cost them billions of dollars, driving up prices, reducing sales and causing layoffs and production cuts at plants worldwide.
Still, if Mr. Trump’s goal is to kill Canadian auto production, he may be succeeding – for now at least.
Vito Beato, the Unifor local president who represents workers at Stellantis’s closed Brampton, Ont., plant, said the trade turmoil coupled with the prolonged retooling shutdown have left his members feeling uncertain about the factory’s future. He said he expects to hear from Stellantis in June about when the factory will reopen. Lou Ann Gosselin, a Stellantis spokesperson, said no restart date has been announced.
Greig Mordue, a professor at McMaster University, said carmakers in Ontario are in a holding pattern amid Mr. Trump’s often chaotic tariff rollout.
“They’re not announcing new products. They’re reluctant to maximize their production in Canada,” he said by phone. “It’s tariffs, it’s U.S. government sentiments. There’s a lot of issues that need to be reconciled, and not getting ahead of your skis is probably the most prudent thing to do right now.”
Ontario auto production by Ford, General Motors, Stellantis, Honda and Toyota totalled 1.3 million vehicles in 2024. Honda and Toyota together account for 953,000 of that amount, with plants in Alliston, Cambridge and Woodstock.
These factories are maintaining production and employment levels, Prof. Mordue says, because the automakers do not want holes in their lineups and are willing to eat the costs of tariffs, likely thousands of dollars per car.
“They still have demand for their product, and you can’t shift production rapidly,” said Prof. Mordue, a former general manager at Toyota’s Canadian manufacturing division.
Oshawa
General Motors will eliminate one of three production shifts at its Chevrolet Silverado plant east of Toronto by the fall, laying off 700 employees. GM, citing the tariffs, said the plant will focus more on producing for the Canadian market. The plant, which closed in 2019 and reopened in 2021, employs about 3,000 hourly workers.
Ingersoll
GM says its CAMI factory in Ingersoll will close in May and reopen in October. About 500 of the 1,300 hourly jobs will be eliminated at the plant, which makes the Chevrolet BrightDrop electric delivery van and EV battery modules. The factory, formerly a joint venture with Suzuki, was retooled with taxpayer money to become Canada’s first large-scale all-electric vehicle plant in 2022.
Windsor
Stellantis’s assembly plant in Windsor was closed for two weeks in April and will see rolling production cuts and layoffs through to July. This includes shutdowns for a week in July and two in August, said James Stewart, president of the Unifor local that represents workers at the plant across the river from Detroit. Stellantis has also postponed the planned addition of a third shift at the factory, which makes Chrysler minivans and electric Dodge Chargers and employs 3,800 hourly workers.
Oakville
Ford‘s Oakville plant has been closed since 2024. The factory west of Toronto, which made the Lincoln Nautilus and Ford Edge, was to be retooled to make electric cars and battery packs. But slowing sales of EVs spurred Ford to change its plan. The factory is instead being transformed to make Ford F-250 pickup trucks and won’t reopen until next year. That means 3,200 workers remain laid off.
Brampton
The last Dodge muscle car rolled off the assembly line at Stellantis‘s Brampton plant in late 2023. Since then, 3,000 workers have been on layoff, awaiting a refit to make Jeeps at the factory northwest of Toronto. However, Stellantis paused work at the factory in February amid head-office turmoil and questions about the Jeep lineup. About 400 tradespeople rebuilding the assembly line were sent home. Since then, not much has been happening at the factory, and the union fears no cars will be produced for another 12 months.