A Manitoba community would be ‘dramatically and negatively impacted’ by tariffs on steel and aluminum: advocates

Manufacturing advocates say U.S. President Donald Trump’s new 25 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminum imports will impact hundreds of Manitoba jobs and families.

Terry Shaw with the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters Association said Manitoba ships about $200 million of steel to the United States annually.

While he said that’s a drop in the bucket for Manitoba’s economy as a whole, there’s an asterisk—it all comes from one facility north of Selkirk.

“Hundreds of jobs, hundreds of families in one community, very dramatically and negatively impacted, and you see that kind of across the sector, across the country,” he said in an interview Tuesday with CTV Morning Live Winnipeg.

“That’s our concern in regards to these tariffs—what they mean to these individual communities and these individual segments of the manufacturing sector.”

Trump signed an executive order Monday to remove the exemptions from his 2018 tariffs on steel and increase his 10 per cent 2018 aluminum tariffs. He said the impact of global overcapacity on the American domestic market was to blame for the new taxes.

“These actions are necessary and appropriate to remove the threatened impairment of the national security of the United States,” the order states in part.

The tariffs are slated to come into effect March 12.

Selkirk Mayor Larry Johannson said truckloads of steel leave the plant every day, with about 70 per cent of that destined for the U.S.

Given how many families rely on the plant for employment in the area, he is concerned about the possibility of layoffs.

“To throw these kind of tariffs around, just like, without a second thought to it, it’s a devastating thought to us,” said Johannson.

Premier Wab Kinew, who is heading to Washington, D.C. this week with other Canadian premiers on a trade mission, said the province will protect the jobs of people in Selkirk.

“We’re going to stand up for Selkirk. We’re going to stand up for the steelworkers there, and we’re going to make sure that we do the right thing for our province,” said Kinew during a media conference Monday.

Johannson is hopeful the trade mission is successful.

“I have faith that they’re going to do the right thing for Manitoba,” he said.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the tariffs entirely unjustifiable and unacceptable. He told reporters in Paris the federal government will work with the U.S. administration in the lead-up to the tariffs to highlight their negative impact.

If they do come to pass, he said Canada’s response will be firm and clear, as Trudeau vowed to stand up for Canadian workers and industries.

Shaw thinks a strong response is needed.

“We have to go tariff for tariff. While we don’t want to see an increase in costs on both sides of the border, retaliatory tariffs are a measure that we are promoting.”

To help, Shaw said consumers can look for Manitoban and Canadian products while shopping. In the meantime, his organization is seeking out different markets to diversify away from the sector’s reliance on the United States. That could involve changes around inter-provincial trade barriers and procurement reform.

“Billions of dollars are spent by governments at all levels every year on construction projects and other investments like that that could be using Manitoba and Canadian steel and aluminum.”

- With files from CTV’s Rachel Lagacé, Danton Unger and Rachel Aiello