“Whether or not they ever be put into place, the damage is done,” said Greig Mordue, a former auto industry executive and associate professor at the W. Booth School of Engineering Practice and Technology at McMaster University.
He says Trump’s threats have already changed the landscape. Whether he goes ahead with the tariffs or not, or whether he carves out specific exemptions, the threat alone will drive investment out of Canada and into the U.S.
“For at least the next four years, there will be no serious investment in the Canadian automotive industry,” said Mordue.
A nice little addition is that we control most of the raw resources that goes into producing almost everything we need in the first place, so a weakened dollar due to borrowing and printing for the sake of massive public investments into our own industries actually makes us more competitive on the world market, especially for high end manufacturing or low and medium end that has very little labour input.
And such build-up will benefit the country massively in the long term as well, presuming that we’re not neglectful in keeping them up to date as technology moves on. Not to mention all the employment opportunities this brings.
Canada is a superpower when it comes to energy, minerals, lumber, and agriculture. Not to mention that we’ve done surprisingly little in value added production of our raw resources, especially for selling oil without refining any of it. And delivering to the world market is easy, thanks to the build-up of the St Lawrence over the previous century, as well as BC’s harbours.