U.S. Treasury Secretary\u00a0Scott Bessent\u00a0downplayed the tariff impact on Thursday morning, and said tariffs on steel and aluminum, materials that are both heavily used in cars, would be part of trade discussions with Canada.<\/p>\n
“I believe that the Ford F-150, 250 \u2014 their big truck series\u00a0\u2014 is made out of aluminum instead of steel, which is different\u00a0than other cars. So I think maybe the aluminum tariffs hit them\u00a0harder. We will be negotiating with Canada on those,” Bessent said\u00a0in an interview with CNBC.<\/p>\n
Both steel and aluminum going into the U.S. have been subject to\u00a050 per cent tariffs since June.<\/p>\n
This comes after General Motors said last week that tariffs cost the company $1.1 billion US (about $1.52 billion Cdn)\u00a0in its\u00a0second quarter. Chief financial officer Paul Jacobson said the tariff impact for the full year could reach $4 or $5 billion US, though GM is working to offset that with “manufacturing adjustments, targeted cost initiatives\u00a0and consistent pricing.”<\/p>\n
“Over time, we remain confident that our total tariff expense will come down as bilateral trade deals emerge and our sourcing and production adjustments are implemented,” Jacobson said on the company’s quarterly earnings call.<\/p>\n
On its own earnings call on Tuesday, Stellantis also said tariffs were having a major impact,<\/a> and could add up to the tune of 1.5 billion euros (about $2.4 billion Cdn) this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since April, a 25 per cent tariff rate on all finished cars going into the U.S. has applied, regardless of what country they’re made in. But under the Canada-United States-Mexico trade agreement (CUSMA), that rate only applies to the non-U.S. content of a car.\u00a0<\/p>\n So far, that cost hasn’t made its way into car prices\u00a0\u2014\u00a0GM said pricing “remains stable” for the second quarter, and added pricing assumptions for North America for the rest of the year are unchanged. Ford also said it\u00a0expected net pricing to remain “flat.”<\/p>\n Industry analyst Sam Fiorani said it isn’t entirely surprising that companies are choosing to eat the cost of tariffs thus far.<\/p>\n “The car companies can’t really push the tariffs through directly yet, because we’re in this period of flux, we don’t know what the end point will be,” Fiorani said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Raising prices by 10 or 15 per cent for now and then lowering them if tariffs come back down isn’t an option, he explained, because any customers who just bought the car when it was at the higher rate would be upset with the change. If they do raise any prices, that would have to be longer term.<\/p>\n Autoworkers feeling the impact<\/p>\n While folks buying cars have been spared the cost of tariffs for the time being, workers in the auto industry haven’t been so lucky.<\/p>\n Lana Payne, national president of Unifor, which represents some 40,000 autoparts and assembly workers in Canada, says tariffs have resulted in lost work and investment within Canada.<\/p>\n In May, GM announced<\/a>\u00a0it would be cutting production at its Oshawa, Ont., plant from three shifts down to two in the fall, laying off 750 autoworkers\u00a0as a result.\u00a0Windsor’s Stellantis assembly plant<\/a> is also alternating between full production levels, a reduced schedule and full shutdowns throughout the summer. And Stellantis’s Brampton, Ont., plant also paused retooling in recent months, with workers there recently telling media<\/a> they were growing increasingly concerned about when work would resume.\u00a0<\/p>\n “The carnage is building up,” Payne said. “Pretty much across the entire auto sector, there has been an impact of some kind or another, depending on the facility and the community.”<\/p>\n WATCH | Auto expert discusses Windsor Assembly Plant’s future given Stellantis earnings: <\/strong> The Windsor Assembly Plant could be in trouble if tariffs don’t disappear, as company posts losses: Auto expert<\/p>\n The Windsor Assembly Plant could be in serious trouble if tariffs don’t go away, a leading automotive expert says, as U.S. President Donald Trump renews threats of tariffs. It comes as the company says preliminary estimates show a nearly $4-billion loss in the first half of this year. The CBC’s Katerina Georgieva reports. <\/p>\n If tariffs on autos are here to stay, Payne says she expects more of these production cuts and pauses to pile up. That’s why she says it’s “crucial” that a trade deal between Canada and the U.S. sets tariffs on autos at zero \u2014 something she’s been working to articulate to folks in government.<\/p>\n “We’ve been very clear to the government what our red lines are,” Payne said. “Even though we’re facing a deadline right now of August 1st \u2026 we’re much better off having no deal than a bad deal that will result in a continued bleed of investment and jobs out of this country.”<\/p>\n Only thing that will help is a trade deal<\/p>\n While he doesn’t have a prediction for Canada’s trade deal, president and CEO of Global Automakers of Canada David Adams says he hopes the rate will be zero, at the very least\u00a0for CUSMA-compliant<\/a> cars and parts.\u00a0<\/p>\n “The reality is that any tariff is problematic,” Adams said. “If you start doing the math \u2026 you’re talking, you know, billions [of] dollars per year in terms of the extra cost associated with the tariff.”<\/p>\n At any rate higher than zero, he says automakers would slowly start to shift production\u00a0to the U.S.<\/p>\n Adams says it won’t necessarily be easy to strike an agreement, and that Canada should be very careful about what it puts on the table, given the free trade deal between the U.S., Canada and Mexico is up for review in 2026. So far, goods that are subject to that deal have been sheltered from any tariffs, which has helped Canada weather the tariff storm.<\/p>\n WATCH | Why the American auto industry needs the Canadian market:<\/strong> Why the American auto industry needs the Canadian market<\/p>\n Stephen Beatty, former Toyota Canada vice-president, gives his thoughts on the ongoing Canada-U.S. trade talks. Prime Minister Mark Carney met with the automotive sector CEOs on Wednesday to discuss U.S. tariffs\u2019 impact on Canadian supply chains. TAGS: cbc, cbc news, automotive, auto, trade war, canada, canadian politics, exports, business<\/p>\n “We don’t have a lot of cards to play, and we need to play the cards that we do have very carefully and strategically,” Adams said.<\/p>\n Given that the European Union and Japan recently reached deals with the U.S. that will allow those countries to sell products to Americans at a 15 per cent rate, Fiorani\u00a0says he expects cars and parts not covered by CUSMA might face a similar rate.<\/p>\n Fiorani said the deals with the EU and Japan are a sore spot for car companies and suppliers in North America, given that rates for cars coming from Europe or Japan are lower than the 25 per cent currently on cars from Canada.<\/p>\n “These are companies that have built their business case on shipping parts across the border. And now they’re competing with vehicles that are coming from either the EU, U.K. or Japan, with potentially a lower tariff than they’re currently applying to Canadian parts and vehicles,” Fiorani said.<\/p>\n That said, Fiorani points out that the deals that U.S. President Donald Trump has struck so far are still “handshakes at best,” as none of them have yet been signed\u00a0on paper, which means that reality could still change.<\/p>\n In the long term, Greig Mordue, an associate professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, says putting any kinds of tariffs on the auto sector would be a dismantling of the last 60 years of North America’s joint auto industry. And while that won’t happen overnight, Mordue says Canada will need to find ways to distance itself from the U.S. in the long run.<\/p>\n He added that while the Detroit Three\u00a0have been the focus of the auto sector in North America historically, they don’t produce as many cars in Canada anymore. And of the 1.3 million cars made here in 2024, 533,000<\/a> were Toyotas and 420,550<\/a> were Honda models.<\/p>\n Given that, and the global shift from gas-powered cars to electric vehicles, he says Canada should try to find partnerships abroad.<\/p>\n “We can put our head in the sand and say \u2026 ‘We gotta close the gates and make fortress North America,” Mordue said. “Or we can recognize that the world is changing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Detroit\u00a0Three\u00a0automakers are taking a big hit from the Trump administration’s tariffs, and industry experts say only one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3090],"tags":[51,1700,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-307258","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114949317183553283","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Cars](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/ford-oakville-assembly-20240405.jpg\")
Ford Motor Co. says it plans to assemble its F-Series Super Duty pickup trucks at its Oakville, Ont., assembly plant beginning in 2026. The automaker announced plans last year to spend $1.8 billion to transform the facility into a hub for electric vehicle manufacturing. (Frank Gunn\/The Canadian Press)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1753987272_642_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1753987273_340_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n