When General Motors of Canada underwent a model changeover in 1999 at its sprawling factory complex in Oshawa, Ontario, the last Chevrolet Lumina to come off the line went on a monthlong farewell tour. It was wheeled around the factory, and employees signed their names in permanent marker on its white paint.<\/p>\n
No one at the Canadian Automotive Museum<\/a> in Oshawa, where the Lumina is now displayed, has counted the signatures. But in 1999, roughly 22,000 unionized G.M. employees could have taken a pen to the car.<\/p>\n G.M.\u2019s dominance of Oshawa, east of Toronto, for nearly a century was part of the giant footprint U.S. automakers long enjoyed in Canada \u2014 a presence that has gone into a steep, accelerating retreat as President Trump wages economic war against Canada.<\/p>\n Across the river from Detroit, Chrysler, now part of Stellantis, once economically ruled the city of Windsor, Ontario, from its assembly plant. And Oakville, Ontario, part of the Toronto metro area, was practically a Ford company town, with two giant plants and corporate offices.<\/p>\n At the industry\u2019s peak around the turn of the last century, cars and trucks, most made by U.S. manufacturers, accounted for nearly 40 percent of all exports from Ontario, Canada\u2019s industrial center and most populous province.<\/p>\n The massive factories and the hundreds of thousands of workers they employed underscored the tight bonds between the United States and Canada.<\/p>\n For over 60 years, Canada\u2019s auto industry had thrived from free trade agreements that sent much of its production to the United States. By ending tariffs, those agreements also made cars built in American factories affordable for Canadians, a boon to U.S. industry.<\/p>\n But Mr. Trump\u2019s tariff campaign is shattering that dynamic, hollowing out the once-mighty Detroit-based carmakers in Canada. The future of a free-trade agreement that has knit together Canada, the United States and Mexico is also up in the air.<\/p>\n \u2018Writing is on the wall\u2019<\/p>\n G.M.\u2019s plant in Oshawa has shrunk to 2,100 union employees, about 10 percent the size of the work force nearly three decades ago.<\/p>\n The Detroit Three, once the only carmakers in Canada, last year produced just 23 percent of the 1.2 million cars and trucks that came out of Canadian factories, largely supplanted by Asian automakers.<\/p>\n A decade ago, American companies accounted for 60 percent of auto assembly jobs in Canada, but by 2024 that figure had fallen to 38 percent, according to a study by the Trillium Network, a manufacturing analysis group at Western University in London, Ontario. That percentage is likely to fall further after a recent series of plant closings and layoffs.<\/p>\n The fundamental question is now: Do U.S. auto companies have any future in Canada?<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that the writing is on the wall in terms of the decline,\u201d said Dimitry Anastakis, an economic historian at the University of Toronto. \u201cWhether that means complete demise is a different kettle of fish.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n Mr. Trump\u2019s blow to automakers in Canada is not just from tariffs. His turn from electric vehicles<\/a> has also unraveled incentive deals, worth billions of dollars, that Canada gave carmakers to shift away from internal combustion engines.<\/p>\n Since Mr. Trump took office last year, Stellantis abandoned plans to make a gas and electric Jeep in Brampton, Ontario, moving production to Illinois, and sold its interest in an electric vehicle battery factory in Windsor.<\/p>\n G.M. stopped building electric vans, emptying a factory in Ingersoll, Ontario, and also cut jobs and production at a plant in Oshawa.<\/p>\n Ford abandoned plans to make electric vehicles in Oakville and is refitting that factory to make large pickups.<\/p>\n The survival of what remains of the Detroit-based industry, according to people in the industry, politicians and economists, rests largely on the fate of the U.S.-Canada-Mexico trade pact now under review.<\/p>\n Making investment decisions is challenging \u201cbecause there is no certainty around the rules of the game,\u201d said Brian Kingston, president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers\u2019 Association<\/a>, the Detroit-based companies\u2019 trade group.<\/p>\n A return to a tariff-free system should be an essential goal in negotiating any new agreement, he added.<\/p>\n But Mr. Trump has shown no inclination to reduce or eliminate a 25 percent tariff he imposed last year on Canada\u2019s auto industry, and has said he wants manufacturing returned to the United States. \u201cWe don\u2019t need their Cars,\u201d he wrote<\/a> on social media last year.<\/p>\n Prime Minister Mark Carney\u2019s government, which did not respond to requests for comment, has been angered by some U.S. automakers\u2019 moves away from Canada. The government is demanding that Stellantis abide by commitments it made to retool its Brampton plant in exchange for receiving government money.<\/p>\n But Mr. Carney, as part of his quest to minimize Canada\u2019s economic reliance on the United States, is also looking elsewhere for help.<\/p>\n He has cracked opened the door of the Canadian market to Chinese electric carmakers, which have been effectively shut out of Canada and the United States by 100 percent levies, allowing a small number of cars into Canada at a relatively low tariff rate. <\/p>\n Mr. Carney also made an agreement with South Korea to explore bringing that country\u2019s industry to Canada.<\/p>\n U.S. automakers in Canada had been hurting well before Mr. Trump\u2019s tariff volley. Japanese cars eclipsed American-made cars in popularity as Honda and Toyota rose to prominence in the 1980s.<\/p>\n And NAFTA, the North American free-trade agreement that preceded the current pact, made it harder for Canada to compete because labor costs were significantly lower in Mexico.<\/p>\n Cross-border carmakers<\/p>\n While existing U.S. tariffs threaten the viability of Detroit-based carmakers in Canada, more than 120 years ago levies, along with geography, gave birth to the Canadian car industry.<\/p>\n