Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday his government is not considering hitting American goods with more retaliatory tariffs, even as the trade war rages on, because there are signs that the bilateral talks on relief are headed in the right direction.
Carney is facing pressure from some premiers, like Ontario’s Doug Ford, and organized labour to take on U.S. President Donald Trump as he ramps up his tariffs on critical sectors — levies that have drawn jobs and investment away from Canada.
His comments come days after Stellantis announced it would produce its Jeep Compass in Illinois, rather than at the automaker’s Brampton, Ont., plant — a decision that the prime minister called “a direct consequence” of U.S. trade actions.
Ford, who is set to meet with Carney later Thursday, offered a message to the prime minister: “If we can’t get a deal, let’s start hitting the U.S. back hard.”
“We are nice, nice, nice. Play nice in the sandbox,” Ford told reporters. “I am sick and tired of sitting and rolling over. We need to fight back.”
But Carney said it’s not the time for that, given Canada and U.S. officials are locked in negotiations.
“There’s time to hit back and there’s time to talk. And right now, it’s time to talk,” Carney told reporters at an unrelated announcement on crime. “We’re having intense negotiations.”
Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc is back in Washington — after a pause in talks over the Thanksgiving weekend — to meet with senior U.S. officials. Michael Sabia, the clerk of the Privy Council, Canada’s top bureaucrat, is also in D.C. as the two sides try to work out a deal.
Carney said he would brief Ford on the progress of those talks, which have been centered on the steel, aluminum and energy sectors, including a possible revival of the Keystone XL pipeline.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Trump’s tariffs czar, has said any possible trade deal will not involve the removal of tariffs on Canadian automobiles — comments that have prompted anxiety in Ontario and Ford’s demands for Canada to take a harder line on the Americans.
In August, Carney dropped most of the retaliatory tariffs that former prime minister Justin Trudeau had levied on U.S. products, in an attempt to jumpstart talks with Trump to get the U.S. taxes lifted and preserve Canada’s relatively good position.
While the so-called Section 232 tariffs on steel, aluminum, lumber and autos have been particularly punitive, most other Canadian goods continue to trade into the U.S. tariff-free. Carney has so far maintained tariffs on most U.S. steel, aluminum and certain auto imports as he holds out for a deal.
Prime Minister Mark Carney says Canada will not impose retaliatory tariffs on the U.S., stating that the government is engaged in ‘deep negotiations’ concerning several key Canadian industries including the automotive, lumber, steel and aluminum sectors.
As for the idled Brampton plant — among the first major Canadian casualties of Trump’s campaign to draw auto manufacturing back to the U.S. — Carney said he spoke to Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa and expressed Canada’s “disappointment” that the automaker is moving some production from Ontario to Illinois.
Stellantis, the parent company of brands like Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram, said Wednesday it may eventually move another model to the Brampton plant, which employed about 3,000 people and produced some 200,000 vehicles before it was shuttered in 2023 to be retooled — plans the company has now shelved under the current trade environment.
Carney said Filosa told him the decision on what model could eventually replace the Compass depends on the outcome of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) renegotiation that will get underway next year — a process that will likely include reviewing the autos component, given Trump’s fixation on bolstering U.S. car manufacturing.
In the meantime, Carney said some laid off Brampton autoworkers can move to the company’s Windsor plant, which is adding a third shift to ramp up production of Chrysler Pacifica minivans, among other products.
Carney said the government expects the company to offer retraining support to affected workers.
Unifor, the union that represents Stellantis autoworkers, said the offer to transfer Brampton employees to the Windsor plant is not much of a consolation.
“In 2023, bargaining with Unifor, Stellantis’s product and investment commitment plan included restoring three-shift operations at both the Windsor and Brampton assembly plants,” said Lana Payne, the national Unifor president.
“Even with three shifts in Windsor, Stellantis has delivered only half of its product and investment commitment plan. Offering already expected jobs in Windsor, while eliminating Brampton jobs, does not balance the scales — it still amounts to a net loss for Canadian autoworkers,” she said.
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While touring a Chrysler dealership in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called Stellantis’s decision to axe production in Brampton “terrible news” and blamed the prime minister for the development.
“Mark Carney has broken his promise to negotiate a win. We were supposed to have a deal by now — no deal, no win, no elbows, no jobs. Canadians are paying the cost of Carney. His broken promises are costing Canadians their jobs,” he said.
Lana Payne, Unifor national president, says Stellantis is shifting production of the Jeep Compass from its Brampton, Ont., plant to the U.S. as a result of President Donald Trump’s trade war. And the auto sector won’t be the only industry affected. ‘They will keep coming until they have weakened us as a nation,’ she said.
Poilievre urged the government to drop the forthcoming electric vehicle mandate — a policy that Carney has already paused after car companies said the last Liberal government’s ambitious sales goals are unrealistic.
Poilievre is also pitching a new policy to spur domestic auto manufacturing: scrapping the GST on Canadian-made vehicles.
