Canada’s industry minister says Ottawa is “considering all measures” after the U.S. announced it would be hiking tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and other related goods.
François-Philippe Champagne wouldn’t rule out Canada imposing similar tariffs during an interview with CBC News Network’s Power & Politics on Friday.
“It’s fair to say that everything is on the table to protect our industry and our workers,” Champagne told host David Cochrane.
“We’re working in sync with the United States of America.”
President Joe Biden announced earlier this week that the U.S. would be slapping new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), advanced batteries, solar cells, steel, aluminum and medical equipment.
The tariffs are to be phased in over the next three years; those that take effect in 2024 are covering EVs, solar cells, syringes, needles, steel and aluminum and more.
There are currently very few EVs from China in the U.S., but American officials worry that low-priced models made possible by Chinese government subsidies could soon start flooding the U.S. market.
In a separate interview on Tuesday, Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, said “Canada has to” implement similar trade levies.
“Now that the Americans have put up a tariff wall, we can’t leave the side door open here,” Volpe told guest host John Paul Tasker.
Brian Kingston, president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Association, echoed Volpe’s argument in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
“Canada cannot be out of step with the U.S. on China. We need aligned policies that strengthen the North American auto supply chain,” he wrote.
Champagne insisted that Canada wouldn’t be a route for China to gain access to the North American EV market.
“Canada has never been and will never be a backdoor [for] China in the North American market and our U.S. friends understand that,” he said.
The federal government has partnered with provinces to attract investments from major automotive manufacturers to spur electric vehicle production in Canada.
The same day the U.S. announced its new tariffs, Asahi Kasei Corp., in partnership with Honda, announced the construction of a $1.6-billion electric vehicle battery plant in Port Colborne, Ont.
Volpe said domestic EV production could be held back if China floods the Canadian market with cheaper products.
“There’s no logic for Canada to force our market to electrify and then turn the market over to the Chinese,” he said.
China has maintained that the U.S. tariffs are a violation of international trade rules. It is not clear how the country will respond at this point.
Volpe suggested Beijing could retaliate by implementing export controls on its critical minerals that are used in EV battery manufacturing.
Champagne said it’s important for Canada to shore up its own critical mineral production.
On Thursday, Canada and the U.S. announced they would be co-investing in critical mineral producers for the first time as they work to boost regional supplies.
Natural Resources Canada and the U.S. Department of Defense are together putting about $32.5 million into Fortune Minerals Ltd. — which is working on a project with bismuth and cobalt in the Northwest Territories — and Lomiko Metals Inc., focused on a graphite project in Quebec.
It seems like we are slowly trying to turn around outsourcing everything to China. I wonder how far and how expensive it will end up.
The reason it is less expensive to manufacture in China is literal slavery. If iPhones were manufactured and assembled with no slave labour at all (mining, silicon forging, plastic manufacturing, plastic molding, metal casting, board manufacturing, assembly, and shipping) it would cost 2 or 3 times as much.
Breaking reliance on slave labour means moving away from disposable electronics and towards devices that last for 10+ years. But no one wants to use the same phone or computer for more than a couple years and even fewer people want to work in a manufacturing environment.
I’m currently using my 2008 MacBook Pro. For basic web browsing, text editing and music playing, it works great. And for other stuff it handles remote desktop sessions just fine.
On the original topic, I can’t say that I’ve seen any Chinese vehicles on the road or for sale… is the government trying to get out in front of that one?
The big issue is bicycles — every bicycle (especially the electric ones) has a bunch of components only available from China, with other manufacturers priced out of the market years ago.
Not sure what OS you are running but I have 3 different Macs between 2008 and 2012 that I use everyday ( iMac and MacBook ).
I run Linux and it amazes me how few things I cannot do on them. But I have also started to use remote desktops.
One of them sits in my living room and I started using remote desktops just so that I could continue tasks without having to go back to the office upstairs. It works brilliantly and the screen is gorgeous. I started doing it on the other machines as well and now I have one powerful machine running multiple containers and VMs that are mostly accessed from these old Macs.
I still browse the web, edit docs, watch video, listen to music, use the USB, and even teleconference locally. But big compiles, machine learning, video editing, distro experiments, and other stuff are all done on the remote desktops. A nice side benefit is that I do better environment isolation now with different desktops dedicated to deferent tasks. For example, I compile SerenityOS fairly often and even do some basic news site browsing in Ladybird. That has its own VM so I can kick it off on any of these old machines with no impact on the local CPU.
“But no one wants to use the same phone or computer for more than a couple years and even fewer people want to work in a manufacturing environment.”
The factors include poor software/hardware support and marketing.