Anxiety throughout manufacturing sector as trade war looms

How could a possible trade war between Canada and the U.S. affect local manufacturing jobs? CTV London’s Bryan Bicknell investigates.

Anxiety is being felt throughout the region’s manufacturing sector, because of the trade war launched by U.S. President Donald Trump.

It’s not knowing what comes next that’s causing grief, said the CEO for ETBO Tool and Die outside Aylmer, Ont.

“We don’t know what’s happening today. We don’t know what’s happening tomorrow. The consequences are severe,” said Etienne Borm.

The family-run manufacturer employs about 200 people.

Borm said everything it produces ends up in the United States, whether direct from the Aylmer plant, or after stopping at a Canadian customer first to have value-added.

He worries it could all come to a standstill.

“We could be a week away from an automotive shutdown. We could be nowhere near an automotive shutdown. I kind of liken it to the beginning of COVID. You sort of didn’t know what was going on, things change by the minute,” commented Borm.

The feeling is much the same throughout the southwestern Ontario manufacturing belt. In the town of Ingersoll, several hundred workers at the CAMI electric van plant await news of how they could be caught in a trade war, along with employees at several other parts manufacturers in the community. Ingersoll Mayor Brian Petrie hopes cooler heads prevail.

“We pride ourselves on being the largest industrial per capita manufacturing community in all of Canada. So, we have a lot at stake in this game, and certainly we have CAMI Automotive and a lot of other things that produce great products all over the world, and we want to keep doing that,” said Petrie.

One manufacturing expert estimates about 100,000 jobs are directly tied to manufacturing in southwestern Ontario, with another three to four times as many indirectly connected. Brendan Sweeney, managing director for Trillium Network for Advanced Manufacturing, said U.S. companies won’t operate at losses for long, should the tariffs come to fruition.

“You’re bringing stuff in, you’re shipping it back to the United States. If an auto maker or parts maker is lucky enough to have a 10 per cent margin, you take 25 per cent off of that, that’s a 15 per cent loss. That’s not how companies operate, that’s not how they plan to operate. They might be able to do that out of the goodness of their hearts to fulfill some orders for a day or two,” Sweeney explained.

CTV New also spoke with PowerCo, the subsidiary company for the future Volkswagen battery plant in St. Thomas. It declined our request for an interview, but a company spokesperson issued the following statement:

“It is too early to speculate on the impact the newly announced tariffs could have on the automotive industry. We remain focused on our mission to ramp-up the St. Thomas gigafactory and to deliver a project with the right engineering and the right supply chain partners.

PowerCo’s key infrastructure in work is well under way, including rail spur and substation, with our first cells expected in 2027, followed by a demand-based ramp-up of mass production. We recently surpassed 100 employees and remain in hiring mode, from logistics to operations, and we look forward to sharing additional milestones as they arrive."