Brian Pannebecker is the founder of Auto Workers for Trump, which held 22 rallies outside auto plants during the presidential campaign.NICK HAGEN/The New York Times News Service
The next president of the United States would be hard-pressed to find a more loyal supporter in Michigan than Brian Pannebecker, the founder of Autoworkers for Trump 2024.
But Mr. Pannebecker can’t quite comprehend why the man he worked to get into the White House would threaten across-the-board tariffs on Canada, which is deeply integrated with the industry that provided a livelihood for him and numerous other Michiganders.
“I don’t really understand why he’s doing that,” he said in an interview this week.
“Canada is not our concern,” he added. “The general sense of the average worker and consumer here in Michigan is – we view Canada as our friends, our trading partners, not as adversaries or enemies.”
Mr. Pannebecker’s home state is among the reasons Mr. Trump was re-elected president. Michigan was among the critical electoral battlegrounds Mr. Trump won earlier this month, after losing there four years ago. At one of many campaign trips to Michigan this year, he described Detroit as a city that had been “decimated as if by a foreign army” because of manufacturing job losses.
The “nightmare for the American auto worker ends the day I take the oath of office,” he promised the Detroit Economic Club in October.
Nearly two months before that January date, however, many are now struggling to comprehend the possibility of 25-per-cent tariffs against anything from Canada.
“I think tariffs can be used in certain circumstances, but I hope they’re not used in a broad brush,” said Ron Weiser, a former chair of the Michigan GOP.
One in five American cars is made in Michigan, and automotive products are the most important element of its trade with Canada – including Ontario, its biggest export market. In 2022, vehicles and their parts made up 40 per cent of Michigan imports from Canada – and 47 per cent of goods flowing from the state into Canada.
Integration of car and truck manufacturing between the two countries is so thorough that the reporting of parts by national origin under the American Automobile Labeling Act lumps Canada and the United States together in a single category.
Parts often flow back and forth across the border several times before a vehicle rolls off an assembly line.
The imposition of steep tariffs on that flow of goods “would likely increase costs and create logistical challenges,” said Mark Barrott, who leads the automotive and mobility practice at Plante Moran, an audit and consultancy firm based in Southfield, Mich.
“Long term, there might be an opportunity to develop a more self-sufficient supply chain within the U.S., but this would require significant time and investment.”
In the meantime, tariffs could hurt both those who make cars and those who buy them.
“The worst-case scenario is that we’ll see vehicle price increases across the board,” Mr. Barrott said. As a result, “we could potentially see a slowdown in new vehicle sales.”
That prospect has been of little concern to Mr. Trump’s most dedicated supporters.
In October, Michigan pollster Richard Czuba asked voters how Mr. Trump’s pledge to escalate tariffs would affect the prices they pay for goods. The bulk of Mr. Trump’s loyalists expected tariffs to have no impact – or, in fact, to bring down overall prices. For them, the threat of tariffs against Canadian-made goods is unlikely to cause concern, Mr. Czuba said.
“Until they see it in their pocketbooks – meaning increased costs for things they need or fewer jobs – I don’t think it means anything to them,” he said.
But past experience suggests higher tariffs make such an outcome inevitable. Tariffs on South Korean and Chinese clothes washers raised the price of all washers – including American-made models – by nearly 12 per cent. Dryers rose by a similar amount, despite not being subject to additional tariffs, according to a 2020 report by researchers with the Federal Reserve Board and the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Altogether, those tariffs added US$1.5-billion a year to the consumer cost of laundry machines, while generating just US$82-million in annual tariff revenue.
“The reason this is so costly is because most of that extra money is going to company profits,” said Betsey Stevenson, a former chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labour who is now a professor at the University of Michigan.
A 25-per-cent tariff on all goods from Canada and Mexico would cause so much harm to Americans, she said, that “I would be very, very surprised – jaw-dropped, even – if he were to actually go through.”
Instead, she and supporters of Mr. Trump say the president-elect simply wants to secure further concessions that, he can argue, will benefit people in states such as Michigan.
“A Trump presidency is a massive net positive for Michigan, regardless of the tariff,” said Rob Steele, a cardiologist who represents the state GOP at the Republican National Committee. “That’s why he did so well among blue-collar workers.”
Mr. Pannebecker was among those most dedicated to promoting Mr. Trump to those workers.
A 36-year Chrysler and Ford employee, he led Autoworkers for Trump 2024, which held 22 rallies outside auto plants during the presidential campaign. At those rallies, Mr. Pannebecker warned about the dangers of Democrats who would seek to limit sales of the combustion engines that have powered a century of Detroit industry.
“That’s like telling somebody, ‘We’re going to sever your carotid artery and watch you bleed out right here,” Mr. Pannebecker said. As for Mr. Trump: “It’s not an exaggeration to call him the saviour” of American autos.
Mr. Pannebecker remains confident that whatever the reason Mr. Trump has proposed new tariffs against Canada, his home state will win more than it loses.
“The ultimate goal here is to make it too expensive to bring those parts in from another country,” he said, “so that the parts suppliers will take a good, hard look at building their facilities here in the United States – preferably in Michigan.”