The national president of Unifor says the ongoing “chaos” of U.S. President Donald Trump’s shifting announcements on tariffs has led to investments in sectors like the auto industry being put on hold, posing a danger to the country’s economy.
Lana Payne’s comments come just minutes after the White House announced Tuesday Trump would not double incoming tariffs set for Wednesday on steel and aluminum, as he had threatened to do just hours earlier, instead keeping them at the original rate of 25 per cent.
“He likes chaos, he likes the drama, but the reality is is that his actions are having a real-time impact on Canadian workers and they will have a real-time impact on American workers,” said Payne, whose union represents people in various industries including steel and aluminum.
The 25 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminum remain set to go into effect on Wednesday.
That’s on top of the 25 per cent sweeping tariffs that went into effect earlier this month — which were temporarily paused on some sectors last week — with additional “reciprocal” global tariffs set to hit on April 2.
Payne said that uncertainty is “dangerous” because it leads to businesses holding off on investment decisions.
“Companies every single day, particularly in manufacturing, particularly in the forest sector, you pick a place, they have to make an investment decision every year,” she said.
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“Am I going to upgrade this mill? Am I going to put a new product here? Am I going to expand? All of those decisions are on hold right now for the most part and that is very damaging for the Canadian economy today, but also down the road.”
The Canadian Department of Finance, in a post this month on how it would respond to U.S. tariffs, noted that as Canadian companies rely on cross-border supply chain, they would face logistical and financial challenges with a likely reduced demand from U.S. buyers.
Due to that uncertainty around trade relations, “businesses on both sides of the border could delay investments, further slowing growth.”
The Bank of Canada also said in its January monetary policy report that Canadian business investment “declines significantly” due to a combination of weaker export activity and an increase in the cost of imported investment goods from the U.S.
It also added that with Canada having $30 billion in retaliatory tariffs in response to Trump’s 25 per cent widespread duties, business profits would be lower and weigh on investment as businesses have to “partially absorb cost increases” associated with those U.S. and retaliatory Canadian tariffs.
The chaos on Tuesday came after Ontario Premier Doug Ford imposed a 25 per cent surcharge on electricity exports to the U.S. on Monday.
Ford announced on Tuesday afternoon he would suspend the surcharge and meet with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, with the White House then saying the threatened 50 per cent steel and aluminum tariffs would stay at 25 per cent.
When he made his threat, however, Trump also said that he would move to “permanently shut down” the automobile manufacturing industry in Canada — which would be heavily impacted by the steel and aluminum tariffs too — if Ontario did not back down.
But Payne told Global News that with the auto sector being in the country for more than 100 years, “these are not Trump’s jobs to steal.”
According to the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, the North American automotive industry was born in Canada with the first large-scale production of autos in Canada beginning in 1904 in Walkerville, which is now part of Windsor, Ont.
“These are jobs that we have as an industry in Canada, because guess what? We actually buy cars in Canada and that means we should also build cars in Canada,” Payne said.
“These jobs do not belong in the United States, they belong to Canada.”
She added that with tariffs still looming on various Canadian goods and potentially the automotive sector specifically, she wants to see the tariffs and threats dropped and officials from both sides of the border to sit down and come to a mutual agreement.
—with files from Global News Sean Boynton, Uday Rana, Isaac Callan and Aaron D’Andrea
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
Trump’s tariff ‘chaos’ keeps auto sector ‘on hold,’ union says
