For Canada’s auto workers, the trade fight with Washington is no longer an abstract argument about border taxes. It is showing up in interrupted factory schedules and uncertainty over where the next vehicle will be built.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is scheduled to visit Detroit on Tuesday, October 13, to make the case for a tariff-free North American auto agreement directly to U.S. business leaders. Announced Monday, the trip follows months of pressure on Canadian manufacturers and renewed worries about production in Ontario. His proposal promises a way to protect Canadian jobs without treating American factories as the enemy. Whether that message can influence the Trump administration is a much harder question.
Detroit Is More Than a Symbolic Destination
Poilievre’s office says he will meet American business leaders and speak to U.S. media in Detroit, the city most closely associated with the country’s automotive industry. General Motors, Ford and Stellantis still have major operations in the region, making it a natural place to argue that Canadian and American manufacturing fortunes are linked. His immediate audience is not a negotiating table in Washington. It is the executives, employers and potentially influential voices who experience the consequences of trade barriers in their own supply chains.
This is also not his first attempt to build support south of the border. In March, Poilievre met senior General Motors and Ford executives during a Michigan visit before unveiling his plan in Windsor. He undertook another U.S. advocacy trip in September. The repeated visits underline his political approach: persuade Americans that removing auto tariffs can protect jobs on both sides, then build pressure for policy change. As opposition leader, however, he cannot negotiate or sign a trade agreement on Canada’s behalf.
The 25% Auto Tariff Has an Important Catch
Since April 2025, the United States has applied a 25% automotive tariff to Canadian-made vehicles, but the details matter. For a vehicle that qualifies under the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement, the duty applies to the value of its non-U.S. content, rather than automatically to its entire value. That distinction can substantially change the burden for manufacturers with American-made components. It does not eliminate the cost or uncertainty for an assembly plant that depends on export access to the U.S. market.
Canada responded with its own 25% tariffs on certain U.S.-assembled vehicles. Non-CUSMA-compliant vehicles are covered, while qualifying vehicles face the tariff on content that is neither Canadian nor Mexican. Ottawa also operates exemptions for manufacturers meeting specified Canadian production commitments. These overlapping rules create a difficult environment for companies deciding where to build the next model. Trump has defended tariffs as a way to shift investment to the United States; Canadian manufacturers argue that a deeply shared production system cannot be reorganized without disruptions.
Windsor’s Shutdowns Put Faces Behind the Numbers
The pressure is visible at Stellantis’s Windsor Assembly Plant, where the company has announced three additional weeks without production. The facility is scheduled to be idle during the weeks of October 19, October 26 and November 2, after employees had already endured a two-week interruption. Stellantis cited both tariffs and consumer demand in explaining the changes. The plant produces vehicles including the Chrysler Pacifica and Dodge Charger, and the scheduled shutdowns affect workers whose finances depend on the regular rhythm of an assembly line.
Temporary downtime is not the same as permanent job elimination, but repeated pauses can reach well beyond a factory gate. Parts suppliers, transportation companies and neighbourhood businesses also depend on steady vehicle output. Meanwhile, a separate struggle over Stellantis’s idled Brampton assembly plant has helped stall negotiations with Unifor. The union says the company has considered closing and selling that facility. None of those possibilities should be mistaken for a completed closure, yet the uncertainty is real for families deciding whether to wait for another production commitment or plan for a different future.
A Canadian Part Can Be an American Manufacturing Job
The auto industry does not operate as two isolated national systems. Canadian government figures show that more than 90% of Canadian-made vehicles and 60% of Canadian-made auto parts are exported to the United States. Components can move across the border repeatedly as manufacturers turn materials into assemblies and finished vehicles. A part stamped in Ontario might become one element in a vehicle assembled in Michigan; other components can travel in the opposite direction. Customs delays or higher costs on either route can reach businesses far from the border.
That integration helps explain the Detroit strategy. Canada estimates its auto sector supports more than 500,000 jobs across its wider economic footprint, including about 125,000 direct positions. American plants, suppliers and dealerships also rely on a functioning continental network. Poilievre’s argument is that tariffs aimed at helping one side can make both sides less competitive against factories elsewhere in the world. It is an appealing commercial case, although shared economic interests do not guarantee that Washington will change its industrial policy.
What Poilievre’s Tariff-Free Pact Would Actually Do
The Conservative proposal goes beyond asking Washington to remove the border duty. Its centrepiece is a production-linked import rule: for every vehicle an automaker builds in Canada, that manufacturer could sell a vehicle assembled in the United States or Mexico in Canada duty-free, calculated on a dollar-for-dollar basis. The idea is to reward companies for maintaining Canadian production instead of giving unrestricted access to Canadian buyers while manufacturing elsewhere. Tariff-free entry to the U.S., however, would still require American agreement.
Poilievre would also remove the federal goods and services tax on Canadian-made vehicles, arguing that a lower purchase price could strengthen domestic demand. Other elements include aligning tailpipe-emissions policy with the United States and preserving CUSMA automotive origin rules, including the 75% regional-content threshold for most passenger vehicles and light trucks. His plan also proposes stronger safeguards for connected-vehicle technology. These measures combine consumer incentives, manufacturing conditions and trade diplomacy, but their effectiveness would depend heavily on how the rules were enforced and how automakers responded.
The Two-Million-Vehicle Ambition Faces a Steep Climb
Poilievre wants Canadian vehicle output to reach two million a year within the next decade. Ottawa says Canadian plants produced more than 1.2 million passenger vehicles in 2025, so the goal would require an increase of roughly two-thirds from that level. The Conservatives point to output of about 2.3 million in 2016 as evidence that Canada once operated on a much larger scale. Regaining that capacity, however, is not simply a matter of convincing factories to run longer shifts tomorrow morning.
Automakers assign new products years ahead, and a plant cannot increase output indefinitely without vehicle programs, tooling, parts contracts and sustained demand. Unifor has identified the absence of production at facilities such as Brampton and the earlier retooling at Oakville as reasons for the recent decline. Reopening an idled operation can require entirely new investment decisions. For workers, the difference between a political target and a funded product allocation is enormous: one offers a possible destination, while the other creates a schedule, suppliers’ orders and the prospect of regular paycheques.
Unifor Supports Free Trade but Disputes the Formula
The most pointed challenge to Poilievre’s plan has come from Unifor, which represents more than 40,000 workers in auto assembly, parts manufacturing and dealerships. In a March letter, national president Lana Payne agreed that restoring tariff-free automotive trade with the United States must be a priority. But she questioned whether a one-for-one arrangement focused on vehicles made in CUSMA countries would create enough incentive to reopen Canadian plants. Agreement on the destination, in other words, has not meant agreement on the route.
Unifor calculated that Canadians purchased roughly 1.3 million North American-built vehicles in 2025, compared with about 1.1 million Canadian-built vehicles destined for the North American market. That ratio, around 0.85 to one, is already relatively close to the proposed benchmark. The union argues that excluding roughly 500,000 overseas-built cars sold in Canada could limit the room for added production, potentially undermining efforts to revive Brampton and Ingersoll. It also questions whether removing the GST on finished Canadian vehicles would materially help workers building engines and other components for cars assembled in the United States.
The Original Auto Pact Offers History, Not a Ready-Made Solution
Poilievre’s language deliberately recalls the 1965 Canada–U.S. Auto Pact, signed by Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson and President Lyndon B. Johnson. The agreement sought to reduce automotive trade barriers and create a larger market in which companies could specialize production across the border. Its Canadian implementation linked duty-free access to domestic production and value-added commitments. It helped establish the cross-border manufacturing pattern that workers in southern Ontario and Michigan now recognize as ordinary business.
The modern market is considerably more complicated. The original arrangement emerged when a small group of North American manufacturers dominated sales and assembly. Today’s factories compete with automakers headquartered in Japan, South Korea, Europe and China, while parts and technology come from global supply networks. CUSMA, which took effect in 2020, already contains detailed rules covering regional content, labour value and steel and aluminum sourcing. Recreating an older pact would therefore require more than reviving its name. Policymakers would have to reconcile new incentives with existing commitments and the realities of a much more diverse industry.
Carney and Poilievre Offer Different Roads to the Same Factory Floor
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government also says it wants U.S. automotive tariffs removed, but its February strategy puts more weight on attracting investment and developing electric and connected vehicles. It earmarked up to $3 billion through the Strategic Response Fund for automotive manufacturing, along with support for workers, charging infrastructure and purchase rebates of up to $5,000 for eligible battery-electric vehicles. Ottawa has also proposed strengthening its tariff-remission system so firms could earn import benefits through production and investment in Canada.
A sharper disagreement concerns China. Under an agreement announced in January, Canada opened an annual quota of 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles at a 6.1% tariff, presenting the move as an opportunity to attract new investment and make EVs more affordable. Poilievre instead proposes aligning with American tariffs on Chinese vehicles as part of a bargain for freer North American trade. Both approaches claim to defend Canadian manufacturing, but they carry different risks: relying too heavily on the U.S. market, or opening a Canadian market in ways established manufacturers and unions fear may erode local investment.
The Next Test Is Whether American Support Becomes Policy
The political calendar makes Tuesday’s Detroit mission more than a sales pitch. During CUSMA’s first joint review in July 2026, the United States did not agree to extend the agreement for another 16-year term. That did not cancel the existing pact; it set the stage for further annual reviews. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in early October that Washington was holding to its trade position with Canada, even as high-level communication continued. A Canadian opposition leader arriving in Detroit cannot remove a tariff through business meetings alone.
Still, American opinion is not uniform. Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers recently called for an end to the Canada tariff fight, citing costs borne by businesses and consumers in his state. Such voices could make it easier for executives to argue that cooperation, not national competition, creates durable jobs. The evidence of progress will not be a handshake or a favourable television interview. It will be whether influential manufacturers demand relief, whether governments engage with a workable proposal, and whether Canadian factories ultimately receive the production commitments their workers need.
