Truck traffic at the Ambassador Bridge, which connects to Detroit, in Windsor Ont., on Jan. 31. President Trump's stiff tariffs on Canada could potentially devastate the auto sector in the U.S.IAN WILLMS/The New York Times News Service
If Motor City is having second thoughts about electing President Donald Trump last November, it hides its regret well.
In a parking lot near the Stellantis assembly plant in Sterling Heights, Mich., a suburb of Detroit, a man in a red pick-up truck festooned with Trump flags hawked Chinese-made “Make America Great Again” hats in a variety of colours, including red, grey, black and gold.
Suggested price: a donation of US$35. He had three takers in under five minutes on Monday afternoon.
Hours later, Mr. Trump imposed 25-per-cent tariffs on most imports from Canada and Mexico, making good on his months-old threat. And while those levies could prove devastating for the sector – auto executives and unions have warned of higher prices, layoffs and a hit to competitiveness – workers and many residents here remain faithful to the vision of an American industrial renaissance Mr. Trump promises to deliver.
Outside the massive Ford Motor Co. Rouge Complex in Dearborn, Mich., where Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing, most workers were indifferent to the tariffs on Tuesday morning.
Rebecka Dobbyn, who voted for Mr. Trump in the last election and has worked at the Dearborn plant for eight years, admitted she was unaware that tariffs on Canada and Mexico had taken effect hours earlier, but said “it’s all part of his strategy to bring jobs back to America and help Americans.”
Although, she added, “it would be nice to be able to afford to buy eggs.”
Out of 20 workers surveyed at the plant gate on Tuesday morning, only three were aware of the tariffs.
“I’m sure it’s going to affect me, but I don’t really know how. I’ll have to do some research,” said Richard Malone, who has worked at the plant for one and a half years.
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Not everyone was so blasé about Mr. Trump’s trade war with the U.S.’s closest economic neighbours.
“I’m nervous because at the end of the day it’s going to be the people who are going to pay with higher prices,” said Kaled Abdulla, who has worked on the assembly line for three and a half years.
Indeed, a trade group that represents most major automakers warned on Tuesday that the tariffs will push prices sharply higher.
Most automakers “anticipate the price of some vehicle models will increase by as much as 25 per cent and the negative impact on vehicle price and vehicle availability will be felt almost immediately,” said John Bozzella, head of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents all major U.S. automakers, except Tesla, as well as Toyota, Volkswagen and Hyundai.
Mr. Abdulla also said he doubts the Trump administration’s claim that the tariffs will result in a manufacturing boom.
Rather than “spending billions to build new factories,” Mr. Abdulla said he thinks companies will choose to pay the tariffs, cut their costs and wait out Mr. Trump’s four-year term.
“I get that the long-term goal is to make the economy better, but we know we’re not making a tonne of money, so I’m scared for my job,” said Mr. Abdulla, who has two children and a third on the way.
“Do we really think Trump and Elon Musk and all these other billionaires are sitting around in a room asking themselves, ‘How can we help the average American citizen?’”
Like local officials in many U.S. cities dominated by the automotive industry, Michael Taylor, the mayor of Sterling Heights, is bracing for fallout from the trade war.
The city, which sits roughly 30 kilometres north of Detroit, is home to a large Stellantis assembly plant that produces the RAM 1500 pickup truck, as well as a powertrain manufacturing facility operated by Magna International.
Parts for both companies move back and forth across the Canada-U.S. border multiple times, he said, “so to slap a 25-per-cent tariff on those parts each time is going to be devastating for our companies, for our workers and ultimately for consumers who will be paying thousands of dollars more.”
Mr. Taylor said his attempts to explain how tariffs work – that U.S. importers, and by extension consumers, pay the tariffs, not foreign countries – are generally “met with eye rolls, people tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about,” he said. “It’s a tough environment to try to thread truth and fact because lies just sound more appealing.”
Mr. Trump easily won Macomb County, home to Sterling Heights, in the November election, winning support from 55.8 per cent of voters.
Bob Johnson, an engineer in the heavy transportation sector and a lifelong Republican, wasn’t among them, having first broken with the party in the 2020 election and then again in November.
Sitting in RJ’s Pub, next to the Stellantis plant, he predicted the tariffs will be “a total disaster” for the U.S. economy.
“Most companies are not going to build a multibillion-dollar plant because of tariffs, they’ll just make us pay more,” he said. “Companies know Trump will be gone in four years, unless he decides he’s a dictator.”
With a report from Reuters