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‘Dumbfounded and disgusted’: Canada’s car capital grapples with Trump tariffs
A long-awaited tariff announcement from U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday spurred confusion and concern in Canada’s automotive capital.
The president, in a lengthy Rose Garden address at the White House, provided some relief to Canada by leaving it out of a list of nations facing new reciprocal tariffs from the U.S.
But the Trump administration is maintaining previously announced tariffs affecting Canada, including up to 25 per cent levies on assembled vehicles and some automotive parts.
“I’m dumbfounded and disgusted at the same time, because we’re talking about people’s livelihoods on the line,” said John D’Agnolo, president of Unifor Local 200.
D’Agnolo’s nearly 2,000 members build Ford’s V8 engines, which are shipped to the U.S. to be put into trucks and Mustangs.
The White House has said that engines are among the “key automobile parts” subject to a 25 per cent tariff starting this week. However, parts that comply with the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) are tariff-free, until the administration “establishes a process to apply tariffs to their non-U.S. content.” Read more
Amazon is selling products calling Canada the 51st state, and many Canadians aren’t happy
U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to turn Canada into the 51st state have hit the virtual shelves of online retail giant Amazon — and fed-up Canadians are calling for the company to shut it down.
A petition is urging Amazon to disable listings of shirts, hats, stickers and other products emblazoned with quotes referring to Canada as the 51st state or otherwise celebrating the idea of Canada being annexed by its southern neighbour.
“This is not a joke to us. It’s a threat to our autonomy and identity as Canadians,” Ontario resident Sue Williams-Dunn, who started the petition in February, wrote in its description.
The petition had more than 64,000 signatures as of Thursday afternoon.
A quick search of “51st state” on Amazon’s website brings up a flood of items, including t-shirts that say “Make Canada Great Again” in a reference to Trump’s slogan, stickers of the map of Canada coloured in with the American flag and hats declaring Canada as “the 51st state of America.”
“This is offensive and foments dissent and war. I will immediately not buy products from Amazon,” one commenter wrote underneath the petition.
The emergence of products cheering for the U.S. to take over Canada is just the latest front in the ongoing trade war between the two countries, a bitter back-and-forth of tariffs and counter-tariffs that has sparked many Canadians to embrace a “buy Canadian” sentiment.
Amazon said in an email to CBC News that the products in question did not breach their policies. Read more
The consumer carbon tax is gone. What will that mean for your wallet?
It’s official — the consumer carbon tax is over.
Mark Carney cancelled the fee on his first day as prime minister last month, signing a directive for the fuel charge to be removed on April 1. The levy had been added to the sale price of carbon-emitting products by fuel type. For gasoline, it was 17.6 cents a litre, and natural gas was 15.25 cents per cubic metre. (The average Canadian home uses about 2,500 cubic metres of natural gas a year.)
Carney initially supported the carbon tax, but reversed course while campaigning for Liberal Party leadership, saying it had become too “divisive.” Though the consumer price on carbon is gone, the industrial price for large-scale polluters remains.
The Liberal government under Justin Trudeau first put the tax in place in 2019 as a way to incentivize Canadians to transition to greener energy sources. But even in the early days, the policy faced opposition from provincial governments, while Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s pledge to “axe the tax” later became a central part of his platform.
The federal carbon price for consumers disappeared Tuesday in all provinces except Quebec, where a provincial price on carbon meant the federal price didn’t apply. B.C. also had its own consumer carbon tax, but that province’s carbon price is lifted as of today, too.
Now that the tax is gone, how might that impact your wallet? Experts say there will be some cost savings passed on to consumers almost immediately, but the loss of the carbon rebate will also have an impact further down the road. Read more
What else is going on?
U.S. tariffs on the auto sector will substantially raise the sticker price of cars, experts say
The White House imposed 25 per cent tariffs on cars and some auto parts as of April 3.
Quebec wants to make it harder for doctors to go from public to private system
Québec Solidaire MNA scoffs at proposal, says it shows ‘lack of courage.’
Could Trump’s tariffs spell the end of Canadian-made NHL jerseys?
NHL game jerseys have been manufactured in Saint-Hyacinthe, Que., since 1975.
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