Can anyone elaborate on why Canada has 100% tariffs on EVs? I think I know why the US does: lobbying by American automakers. Did the US threaten Canada unless they followed suit a long time ago, and is this change a sign that leverage is now lost?
Canada has a large car industry itself - 100% might be excessive, but every western nation now faces a choice between tariffs on EVs or letting their car industry be completely eviscerated with hundreds of thousands of job losses
They can also be incoherent. Don't know about Canada, but here in France we also have a bunch of auto manufacturers and the government seems completely lunatic with these policies.
On the one hand, there's a very strong push to reduce car usage. In Paris, the speed limit has been reduced to 30 km/h, 50 on the ring road, many lanes and parking have been removed to improve bike infrastructure. Then, when sales drop and jobs are on the line, those same people are absolutely shocked.
Now, personally, I'm all for reducing traffic in cities. I'm not particularly keen on breathing exhaust all day every day or getting run over by two tons of steel. Sure, a whole debate can be had on specific use cases, people living where there's no public transit, etc. But my point is that you can't, on the one hand, push for something, then be angry when you obtain the consequences.
Up until a few years ago, there was a very hard push for diesel engines. Local companies invested a lot in those. Now these engines are practically banned, and even gasoline ones aren't faring too well. So, automakers have to scramble to move to electric, but it takes time. While other companies, built from the ground up to this, already have models head and shoulders above what we can produce. And politicians, true to nature, come up with all kinds of weird incentives. They've recently introduced a weight tax on vehicles [0]. On the face of it, it's an "SUV-tax" to limit "gas-guzzlers". Cue surprised faces when they realize a Tesla weighs as much as an SUV (I'm talking European models here, so no absurd Escalades or what have you).
[0] This is France, so laws have exceptions. Electrics get an "allowance", which basically reduces the mass considered for the tax. But it's not entirely clear how that works. Ditto for hybrids.
I'm not convinced there's that big a of a difference as you seem to imply.
Most politicians aren't independent: they are members of parties and, generally, push for the same kind of policies, "the party line".
The Paris mayor is a member of a left party, the Parti Socialiste (PS). The same people who tend to cry foul when plants close down and people are laid off. This party is also more or less in some form of alliance with the Green Party who's also very much against cars. In the lower chamber no party has an absolute majority, but through (shaky) alliances, "the left" has the most seats (still no absolute majority, though). Also, many members of the President's party used to be members of the PS (including President Macron).
So, I'm pretty confortable lumping all these people together, since, broadly-speaking, they defend the same policies, even though there may be the occasional difference.
Like you said, they do have significantly different policies regardless of the fact that they’re in the same general parties, so maybe it doesn’t make much sense to lump them so together. Local politics are very different from national politics.
Umm, it doesn't? I'm assuming you're comparing Tesla non-SUV's to other SUV's. Tesla's aren't light, but they're lighter than most comparably sized SUV's. For example, a model 3 weighs 3800 pounds but a BMW X3 weighs 4200 pounds.
The Tesla is very close. The Renault Scenic EV, which is a popular kind of car here, weighs 1842 kg according to Wikipedia. Not sure if it's considered an SUV, but it's taller and this model used to be considered a "family car".
The limit is very low, 1800 kg (4000 lbs) initially and it's lowered gradually to 1500 kgs (3300 lbs).
My 2005 gasoline-powered mercedes c coupé weighed 1600 kg. My dad's hybrid corolla weighs over 1500 kgs.
An X3 (1930kg) is 100kg heavier than a Tesla (1822kg) in the EU (according to the manufacturers websites) and nobody here would think of an X3 as a small car.
We don't need to force anyone, toyota is happy making cars in Ontario. Kia/Hyundai/Hondas are everywhere on the road, all we needed to do is splash some incentive cash and we could cut out American automakers pretty quickly.
Unfortunately, those Japanese manufacturers are located here because of the American market, because even though there's a healthy domestic market... 80% of what they produce is exported to the US through NAFTA, etc. And they're also here because of the auto-parts supply chain that moves freely back and forth across the border.
The markets are heavily intertwined and have been for decades. E.g. Ford Canada is just as old as Ford in the US.
The “U.S.” car industry is actually the North American car industry. Factories are in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. primarily and parts move across the border duty-free. This dates back to the Auto-pact.
Canada almost certainly does not want to allow Chinese made vehicles to undercut their local producers. Any talk of this is just posturing and threats in the ongoing trade negotiations.
Trump says he wants every car sold in the United States to be made domestically.
The old integrated cross-border auto manufacturing system is over. Stellantis is already moving production of Jeep from Brampton to Illinois, and others are expected to follow.
Because the Canadian auto industry is twin-joined to the American auto industry. A lot of parts that go to the American cars are made in Ontario.
Now, since his American majesty decided to throw away the Canadian auto industry we don't have anything to protect. Better to make deals with the Chinese now, before the whole American auto industry is destroyed.
Partially competition, as a couple of provinces have large car manufacturing. (Ontario and Quebec, mostly). Partially that there's no repair or maintenance infrastructure, nor guarantee a car will keep functioning if (say) the manufacturer shuts down or a model gets discontinued.
As to how much of which, that's a good question, and not one I've seen any answers to.
Canada has something like 500k jobs tied up in the automobile industry. This plays a larger role in the decision than “US strategy” but I am assuming with this stupid trade war it can tip the balance to reducing that tariff.
Carney also has to play a balancing act of western vs central Canadian interests. Oil & gas & canola are on the table here, and it's a dangerous situation. If we lean hard into trying to prop up Ontario's auto-sector we cause a serious crisis for prairie canola farmers, etc.
Both China and the US know this and are playing cat and mouse with us, fanning tensions, and the US is outright funding western separatists and encouraging grievance politics around their resource exports. The US has aggressively tariffed manufactured goods coming out of central Canada (and forestry out of BC) while leaving potash and oil & gas out of AB/SK untouched while simultaneously outright funding far right groups there that are are agitating against Canadian unity.
At the same time China has slapped tariffs on canola and made it clear that EV tariffs are part of the calculus there.
I don't see an easy way out of this. As a resident of Ontario I'd be sad to see the auto sector here go, and it would lead to massive economic devastation here ... but it feels entirely inevitable at this point. Not just because of tariffs but because the actual products from the Big3 automakers are increasingly mediocre and what they're producing here is on the whole not fine, sustainable, products anyways.
Car parts, and Honda & Toyota plants are another story, maybe.
The Canadian and American automotive industry was (until very recently) tightly integrated. 1 in 10 American cars were made in Canada, with parts going back and forth across the border sometimes multiple times in the assembly chain. The automotive sector is also a significant portion of Ontario’s GDP.
So a lot of incentive for Canada to side with America on this. But Trump blew up that relationship, and this is the consequence.
> Canada announced Monday it is launching a 100% tariff on imports of Chinese-made electric vehicles, matching U.S. tariffs imposed over what Western governments say are China’s subsidies that give its industry an unfair advantage.
> The announcement came after encouragement by U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan during a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Cabinet ministers Sunday.
You need to understand: for every tariff the US places on China, the more excess industrial capacity that China needs to direct elsewhere. It goes for steel, autos and more. This means, since America sanctioned Chinese steel, China has been dumping their steel into Canadian markets. With the excess electric car capacity unable to be absorbed by America, China wants to direct it elsewhere. If they start exporting to Canada, this excess capacity will completely destroy automotive manufacturing in Canada, leading to mass layoffs and entire industrial supply chains falling apart. This will inevitably lead to political instability as a large portion of second tier cities in Ontario start having a labour crisis.
This is evidently not ideal. I bore witness to manufacturing completely leave my hometown, third tier city over the span of a decade. Today, there is little economic opportunity in that town, with massive drug abuse, and petty crime. It used to be a nice place, and working in a factory earned you an honest living. Unfettered trade with China killed places like this, destroying an entire generation.
At the end of the day, wanting electric cars from China depends on your values, do you want incredibly cheap electric vehicles, even if it means destroying an entire industry that the largest province in the country relies upon? Or do you want to maintain a functional manufacturing base that is critical to political and social stability?
The outsourcing of American manufacturing was done by the American Corporate Elites. I hope some of your anger is directed towards them.
Lutnick has already stated that America wants all vehicles for sale in America to be built in America. Any vehicles built outside America will be tariffed.
Sure, the Chinese will destroy Canadian any auto-manufacturing left for the domestic market, but it is the Trump administration's stated goal to dismantle the Canadian auto-sector, which is happening now.
