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Derek Grungle, and Austin Welzel, left, both shift workers at the Stellantis Windsor Assembly Plant, stand outside the plant's main gate in Windsor, Ont., on April 10. Stellantis announced a shutdown of the plant hours before U.
S. President Donald Trump announced 25-per-cent tariffs on imported cars kicked in on April 3. Dax Melmer Windsor, Ont.
, and Detroit are separated by a strip of water and linked by a bridge, a tunnel and a history of social and economic ties. But U.S.
President Donald Trump’s tariffs have opened a gulf between the two motor cities, leaving Windsor on the wrong side of a bitter split. Nowhere is the divide more evident than at Windsor’s Stellantis NV STLA-N plant several blocks from the Detroit River. The company has paused production of the Chrysler Pacifica and Dodge Charger.
Some 3,500 workers have been sent home for two weeks that end April 21, along with 2,000 workers laid off in the Windsor region’s parts supply chain, the Unifor union says. Stellantis announced the shutdown hours before Mr. Trump’s 25-per-cent tariffs on imported cars kicked in on April 3.
The company told the union the plant will reopen for two weeks beginning on April 21 but it has made no decisions beyond that, Unifor said in a notice to members. The move includes a month-long halt at the Stellantis Jeep plant in Toluca, Mex., that affects 2,600 workers, and 900 layoffs at six Stellantis parts factories in Michigan and Indiana.
Although Mr. Trump has threatened widespread tariffs several times, only to waffle and retreat, the car levies remain. He is expected to announce similar tariffs on auto parts by May 3, a move experts predict will quickly lead to more shutdowns in an industry in which single-digit profit margins are the norm.
Canada has retaliated with tariffs on U.S. content in assembled automobiles, but left out car parts.
Derek Gungle and others who work at the Stellantis plant are accustomed to periodic layoffs because of production changes, sales dips and even the global COVID-19 pandemic. But this shutdown feels different, driven by a U.S.
President who wants to end the Canadian auto industry and annex the country. “This seems to be a man-made disaster,” Mr. Gungle says.
“We could be selling vehicles. We could be running the economy well and instead everyone’s holding their breath.” ‘We’re not friends’: Canadian union leaders call out American counterparts for supporting Trump’s auto tariffs Mr.
Gungle, 46, says he began watching his household budget more carefully when he first heard Mr. Trump muse about tariffs several months ago. He trimmed his grocery bill, stopped dining out with his wife and says a recent trip to Mexico to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary will be their last for the foreseeable future.
“Whatever we can save a few bucks on,” Mr. Gungle says in an interview. Windsor’s economy is built on making things, whether it’s minivans, car parts or food.
About 500,000 people live in the city and surrounding Essex County, which is perched at the southwestern tip of the province; 50,000 of them work in manufacturing. Windsor is also home to a Ford Motor Co. F-N engine plant, on top of the dozens of parts suppliers in the region.
To the east and north are assembly plants run by General Motors Co. GM-N , Ford, Honda Motor Co. Ltd.
HMC-N and Toyota Motor Corp. TM-N as well as parts giants Magna International Inc. MG-T , Linamar Corp.
LNR-T and Martinrea International Inc. MRE-T . All the plants are linked to the Michigan auto industry across the river, and vice-versa.
New vehicles are loaded onto rail cars at Motipark Finished Vehicle Logistics in Windsor, Ont., on April 10. The tariffs will add about US$3,000 or US$4,000 to the price of a new vehicle.
Dax Melmer/The Globe and Mail On Friday, General Motors said its CAMI Assembly plant in Ingersoll, Ont., will close on April 14 . The plant, which makes Chevrolet BrightDrop electric delivery vans, will briefly reopen in May, but remain mostly offline until October.
Five hundred of the 1,200 jobs there will be eliminated. “When the assembly plant goes down, the suppliers go down,” says Emile Nabbout, who leads Unifor Local 195, which represents 4,500 workers in Windsor, the majority of whom work for auto parts makers. Auto jobs are good jobs, bringing wages of about $50 an hour with generous benefits and layoff top-ups.
For Mr. Gungle, getting hired at Stellantis 10 years ago was a stroke of luck. “They call it the auto lotto – it’s like winning the lottery,” he says.
“It’s one of the best working-class gigs in the city, and obviously the wages are amazing.” A study by the Canadian Chamber Commerce found the cities with the most exposure to U.S.
tariffs are Calgary, Saint John and Windsor, in that order. Excluding energy exports, Windsor tops the list. Other cities in southwestern Ontario with large automaking industries are in the top six – Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo (the three are lumped together), Brantford and Guelph.
The Stellantis plant and the factories that feed it are vital to the region’s economy, says Ryan Donally, head of the Windsor-Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce. Carney hits back at U.S.
with Canadian tariffs on autos “Any time there’s news related to Windsor assembly it draws the attention of the whole community,” Mr. Donally says. “This hurts Canada but it also very much hurts the United States,” Mr.
Donally says of the tariffs. From his office in Detroit, Glenn Steven Jr. can look across the Detroit River and see the Maple Leaf flag waving in the breeze.
For the executive director of industry group MichAuto, it’s confirmation of the close ties of the Ontario-Michigan auto industries. Car parts flow across the border five or six times before a vehicle’s final assembly, fed by dozens of suppliers on either side. It’s an efficient supply chain built on decades of free trade, allowing factories to specialize, pare costs and deliver on tight schedules.
“It’s only separated by water and bridges, otherwise it’s seamless,” Mr. Stevens says. “We don’t even look at it as a border.
We look at our Ontario and Michigan industries and it’s completely integrated.” The tariffs are barriers that raise costs, Mr. Stevens says, which is a big worry in a state where one in five jobs is tied to the auto industry.
And each auto job – whether it’s on the assembly line or in an engineering lab – affects another seven jobs. “We’re certainly seeing the impact,” Mr. Stevens says.
“We’ve already seen some layoffs, we’ve seen some cutbacks because of the uncertainty, and so there’s a real concern here.” The tariffs will add about US$3,000 or US$4,000 to the price, an average US$49,000 car, making a big-ticket item even less affordable, he said, driving down sales, production at the factories and causing layoffs. This has raised fears of a recession in the U.
S. Austin Welzel, who has worked on the assembly line at the Windsor Stellantis plant for eight years, says the tariffs have spurred him to eat out less and put an end to his pastime of travelling to the U.S.
This means no more NASCAR races at Michigan International Speedway. No more trips with his girlfriend. “We were looking for houses and then when the announcement came, it was kind of like, okay, well, now what?” says Mr.
Welzel, 27. “So, we kind of had to put those plans on hold, the searching for houses and starting our future, which sucked because, you know, we were looking forward to that.” Mr.
Trump has also imposed 25-per-cent tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, driving up costs for U.S.-based makers of auto parts and the car makers that buy them.
It’s all part of his plan to bring home manufacturing to a country that long ago shifted production of everything from T-shirts and cellphones to an array of industrial and household items to low-wage countries. New vehicles are stored at Motipark Finished Vehicle Logistics. Dax Melmer Linda Hasenfratz, executive chair of Guelph-based auto parts giant Linamar, dismisses the idea the auto industry will relocate Canadian or Mexican plants to the U.
S. The move would cost billions of dollars and take years to accomplish, she says, and it ignores the reasons companies choose locations in the first place: available skilled workers, affordable energy and other factors. “You don’t build a manufacturing strategy on something that can be imposed today and taken away tomorrow, and that’s what a tariff is,” Ms.
Hasenfratz says. “It makes no sense to do it and you would spend billions of dollars and your payback is zero dollars,” she says by phone. “You’re not getting any more revenue.
You’re not getting any more profit. You’re not reducing your costs. You’re probably increasing them.
And for what?” She says the U.S.-based automakers to which Linamar sells are facing higher costs with tariffs on metals and imported cars.
Linamar, which employs 26,500 workers at factories Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Europe and Asia, is already seeing some costs from Canada’s reciprocal tariffs, and will see more of an impact the longer the U.
S. auto tariffs are in place. She reiterated her prediction the coming tariffs on auto parts will mean “game over” for the automaking business.
“The industry cannot bear the level of cost that that would entail, and I think that’s the tipping point where production just shuts down,” she says, adding the economic and jobs carnage will swiftly prod Mr. Trump to repeal the tariffs. James Stewart of president of Unifor Local 444 in Windsor, which represents workers at the Stellantis plant, says the tariffs and existential threats from the Americans feel like a betrayal among friends.
In a way, that’s what it is. In an interview at the union’s office a block from the Stellantis plant, Mr. Stewart points to the social professional and familial ties between the two cities.
Detroit is where people from Windsor go for concerts, a night out and to see pro sports, he says. Everyone knows someone who has married an American. “Windsor is a border town, so it feels like more of a betrayal,” Mr.
Stewart says. “What did we ever do to you, other than buy your products? It feels like a betrayal from your friends.” As for the coming tariffs on auto parts, they are not sustainable, he says.
Auto production will cease when the first parts supplier decides they cannot ship a part on which a tariff means a financial loss. That’s in the short term. In the long term, the tariffs will force the automakers to halt investing in Ontario’s auto plants, a decline that will lead to inevitable closures.
“Anybody who knows what’s happening knows a 25-per-cent tariff will kill our industry,” Mr. Stewart says. Where are Ontario's auto plants, and how many people do they employ? GM – Oshawa Vehicle: Chevrolet Silverado pick-up truck Annual production: 149,000 Employees: 3,000 hourly GM CAMI Assembly – Ingersoll Vehicle: Chevrolet BrightDrop electric delivery van, battery modules Employees: 1,300 hourly GM – St.
Catharines Product: V-8 engines, transmissions Annual production: 149,000 Employees: 1,100 hourly Toyota – Cambridge and Woodstock Cambridge North products: Rav4, Lexus NX Cambridge South products: Lexus RX 350, RX 350h, 500h Woodstock products: Rav 4, Rav 4 hybrid, Hino commercial trucks Annual production: 533,000 Employees: 8,500 Honda – Alliston Vehicles: Civic, CR-V Annual production: 420,550 Employees: 4,200 Ford – Oakville Status: Closed for retooling. Expected to open in 2026 to make F250 pick-up trucks Employees: 3,600 hourly Ford – Windsor Product: 7.3-litre V-8 engines Employees: 950 Ford – Essex Product: 5-litre V-8 engines Employees: 930 hourly Stellantis – Brampton Status: Closed for retooling end of 2023.
Retooling paused in February, 2025. Expected to reopen by 2026 to make the Jeep Compass. Employees: 3,000 hourly Stellantis – Windsor Vehicles: Chrysler Pacifica, Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid, Chrysler Grand Caravan and electric Dodge Charger Daytona Annual production: 135,000 Employees: 3,600 hourly Report an editorial error Report a technical issue Editorial code of conduct Study and track financial data on any traded entity: click to open the full quote page.
Data updated as of 11/04/25 4:00pm EDT ..
