Trump ends Canada trade talks over Reagan ad on tariffs
President Donald Trump says he’s ended trade negotiations with Canada for using Ronald Reagan in an ad slamming tariffs and trade wars.
- Stellantis recently shifted the Jeep Compass from an assembly plant in Canada down to Illinois as a tariff-avoidance measure.
- Unifor, Canada’s largest private union, and the UAW both blamed Stellantis for the fallout as an overhaul of a trade deal between the two nations looms.
- “Even though it’s a different union,” a UAW member said of Unifor, “all unions, you know, we stand by one another.”
Stellantis announced the largest investment in its 100-year history — a $13 billion injection into the automaker’s Midwestern manufacturing plants — in October. Now, “they are facing an angry union in Canada.”
So says Lana Payne, the president of Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union.
“As Canadians, our members are angry,” Payne told the Detroit Free Press in a recent interview. “Canadians generally are very angry right now, and their anger is red-hot.”
Tensions between the United States and Canada are red-hot, too, beginning with President Donald Trump’s now-abandoned musings about annexing Canada, trade negotiation breakdowns and a back-and-forth spree of tariffs between the two countries.
Stellantis — the parent company of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, Fiat and more — is irking Canadians as it shuffles its manufacturing footprint around to skirt tariffs placed on imported vehicles.
On Oct. 14, Stellantis announced its massive investment in the United States. The international automaker pledged to bring 5,000 jobs and several new cars to production facilities on American soil. One of the vehicles the company pledged to return to the United States was the Jeep Compass, which Stellantis said would be built at the long-idled Belvidere Assembly Plant in Belvidere, Illinois.
The problem? Stellantis had previously committed to building the Compass in Brampton, Ontario, at the Brampton Assembly Plant, which employs approximately 3,000 autoworkers. Brampton is a city of nearly 800,000 in the Toronto metropolitan area.
Adding 5,000 jobs in the United States while leaving 3,000 laid off in Canada, Payne said, is “shortsighted” and a “self-inflicted wound.” The United Auto Workers, on the other hand, signaled the investment as a key victory, pointing to auto tariffs as a useful job protection tool. As Unifor loses jobs and the UAW gains them, the unions disagree over the practicality of tariffs, but if there is broader resentment among the unions, Payne did not voice it.
Canadian autoworkers have taken a hit from General Motors, too. Production of the electric BrightDrop delivery van in Ingersoll, Ontario, at the CAMI assembly plant was halted in October. More than 1,000 Unifor employees worked at that plant and are now laid off.
Back in the States, Belvidere, which had previously been slated to produce Ram’s forthcoming midsize truck, was granted the Jeep Compass and Jeep Cherokee (also brought back from the Toluca Assembly Plant in Mexico). The midsize truck was moved to a Stellantis assembly plant in Toledo, Ohio.
In September 2023, Stellantis agreed to assemble the Compass in Brampton as part of Unifor’s collective bargaining agreement. The company had begun preparing the facility for production before pausing in February as Trump throttled the automotive industry with tariffs.
Vito Beato, the president of Local 1285 in Brampton, said he was shocked when Stellantis notified him that the Compass was not coming to his plant. He was doubly shocked to receive the news via an automated call.
“(Stellantis) communicated with the workers on Oct. 14, through a robocall, that the investment in the Compass was moving down to the States,” Beato said. “Very disrespectful and disgusting behavior by the company.”
Solidarity from Belvidere, UAW leadership
Ryan Schultz, a 49-year-old autoworker from South Beloit, Illinois, worked at the Belvidere Assembly Plant before it was idled. Schultz had just finished a diemaker apprenticeship, looking to move up in the industry, before the first wave of layoffs hit the plant and sent him back down to the production line to fill in.
“Anytime you see any brothers or sisters lose a job, or you go from trying to move yourself up in the field and get thrown back into the pack, I mean, it’s frustrating,” Schultz said.
Schultz, who is a member of UAW Local 1268 in Belvidere, said he had a chance to see inside the idled plant in his town after the mass layoff that took place in February 2023.
“It was just sad. It was just terrible,” Schultz said via phone call while making an hour-and-a-half-long drive back from a temporary Stellantis job site in Naperville, Illinois. “It was just heartbreaking.”
Schultz, much like the UAW’s international leadership, championed the tariffs that influenced the decision to bring the Compass and Cherokee back to the United States via Belvidere, where the vehicles were built from 2006 until 2016.
“Those were our products in the first place. The Compass got moved back in the day down to Mexico because (the North American Free Trade Agreement) allowed that to happen,” Schultz said. “Without those tariffs, I think our plant would still be down.”
Instead, Belvidere will bring somewhere between 2,700-3,100 people to work once that plant reopens, according to an online address from several of the UAW’s top brass in the Stellantis Department.
For the most part, fewer Stellantis employees in the UAW are on layoff in 2025, and many are returning to work. According to data provided in the same address, the union had 3,200 members in the Stellantis Department on indefinite layoff in February, compared with 1,500 as of Nov. 1.
The UAW has voiced measured support for targeted automotive tariffs, with the goal of bringing more automotive jobs back to the country. Shawn Fain, president of the union, called the investment deal a success for the UAW and pledged to keep fighting for a stronger workforce across North America, not just in the United States.
The UAW’s Stellantis Department director, Kevin Gotinsky, struck a similar note in a statement to the Free Press.
“We fought like hell to win justice for Belvidere, and get people back to work building world-class vehicles for Stellantis,” Gotinsky said. “The fact is, Stellantis can afford to do the right thing by Canadian and U.S. autoworkers alike, and we stand in solidarity with autoworkers everywhere fighting for their fair share. We want to see Stellantis commit to good jobs with fair wages, benefits and working conditions at all their facilities across the globe, not an international race to the bottom.”
Despite benefiting from the investment, Schultz is still feeling for Canadian union members shirked by Stellantis — he said he knows what it’s like. Belvidere was at the heart of the UAW’s “Keep the Promise” campaign in 2024, where the union rallied over the idling of the plant, among other grievances.
“As far as Brampton, I feel bad for those guys because we were in a similar situation,” he said. “Everybody has to fight for their cause, and Brampton’s cause is to get a product, you know? They were promised stuff just like we were promised in Belvidere.”
To Schultz, workers from Canada and the United States should stand together — even as the two countries engage in a trade war.
“Even though it’s a different union,” Schultz said of Unifor, “all unions, you know, we stand by one another.”
Unifor: Decision ‘makes no sense’
From February to October, Payne said, Stellantis had one message for Unifor: “They were committed to Brampton. No change in the product for Brampton.”
Beato, the local president in Brampton, said Stellantis paused the retool in February, shortly before the plant was ready to get cars rolling off the line.
“We were kind of ready to go,” Beato said. “We could be building the car and put it in the market by next year.”
Payne said the retool was about 80% finished and said that moving the Compass back to Belvidere (along with all of the machinery that was previously moved from Belvidere to Brampton) only delays the release of the vehicle.
“We are now in the situation where it’s going to take any number of years before they expect to produce the same vehicle that we bargained for Brampton,” Payne said. “They’re no closer to getting cars into the marketplace.”
Stellantis Canada spokesperson LouAnn Gosselin did not give specifics about how far along the retool in Brampton was or when, precisely, the Compass will begin production in Belvidere. Gosselin instead referred to Stellantis’ original news release about the large investment, which indicates that the Compass will launch in 2027.
“We continue to work constructively with government partners and other stakeholders on a plan for Brampton to find viable solutions that build a sustainable, long-term future for automotive manufacturing in Canada,” Gosselin wrote in an email. “The Brampton Assembly Plant has not been closed; it is on an operational pause. We have supports in place to help mitigate the effects of this decision and are offering transfer opportunities at other Stellantis facilities wherever possible.”
Gosselin did not say whether a new product will be assigned to Brampton.
“Right now, our focus is collaborating with governments on solutions that protect Canadian jobs and competitiveness,” Gosselin said.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in October that Antonio Filosa, Stellantis’ CEO, assured him that there would be a new product in the Brampton Assembly Plant. Carney said a decision about the product may not be made until a review of the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) has concluded, according to Bloomberg.
The U.S. Trade Representative, a body of the federal government responsible for overseeing trade deals, will hold a joint review of the trade agreement with the Mexican and Canadian governments in July 2026.
But Unifor has some doubts.
“(Our members) feel betrayed. They feel that the commitments that were made to them were broken,” Payne said. “Credibility is really important in our world.”
Payne and Beato met with Filosa virtually after the investment was announced and said they are still in the dark about what the future holds for the Brampton Assembly Plant.
Stellantis recently announced that approximately 1,500 new jobs will be added to the Windsor Assembly plant in Canada as the company adds a third shift to handle production of the new internal combustion Dodge Charger and the Chrysler Pacifica. Laid-off Brampton employees will have first dibs on those new jobs, though it would likely require a move. Windsor is about a four-hour drive from Brampton.
Gosselin said she expects the third shift to return in early 2026.
Payne, Canada’s most prominent labor leader, said Stellantis’ decision further drives a wedge into U.S.-Canada relations at a time when the two countries should be working together to strengthen production across the continent.
“This is not Canada against the U.S.,” Payne said. “It’s about making sure that workers are protected in all three jurisdictions and making sure that the company understands that.”
Canadian boycotts
Payne said she believes anti-U.S. sentiment from the Canadian market is affecting the sales of American-made vehicles (and other products) in the country.
“Automakers outside of North America are now grabbing a bigger piece of the Canadian marketplace,” Payne said, noting that many Canadians are resistant to buying U.S.-made vehicles.
“As many times as I say that the tariff war is a problem for Canadian workers … it is also a problem for American workers, too, because American workers depend on things that get sold in Canada as well,” Payne said, adding that Canada is the largest export market for U.S. vehicles and particularly strong buyers of pricier models, like pickup trucks.
“Canada is not the problem here — we never have been the problem — and yet we are seeing policy after policy that is designed to basically destroy the Canadian auto industry,” Payne said. “It’s forcing Canadians to look hard at what they buy and where they buy it from.”
A report from the U.S. Department of Commerce, published Nov. 19, supports Payne’s theory that Canadians’ buying of U.S. goods is dwindling.
The data shows that for the first time in 30 years, Canada is no longer the top buyer of American goods. Instead, the U.S. has exported more to Mexico since the start of 2025.
“We expect that this trend is probably going to continue because every single month and every single week we see another example of attacks on the Canadian industrial economy from the United States,” Payne said about the waning of Canadian purchasing.
Trade deal review looms
The investment in the United States comes at a time when relations between the United States and Canada are not only strained but also pending review.
The UAW, in a lengthy public comment addressed to the U.S. Trade Representative, outlined its hopes for the review of USMCA, seeking import quotas and higher labor standards in Mexico. The union also pushed for auto tariffs stricter than what is in place now to boost U.S. auto production even more.
Payne heartily disagrees with the UAW on some fronts, she said, including the union’s goal to further consolidate auto manufacturing in the United States via tariffs.
“It’s important to be frank about these kinds of things,” Payne said of the UAW’s stance on tariffs. “I can’t obviously say anything else than that I completely disagree with this positioning, and I think that in the end, our working people in both our countries are going to be hurt by these things.”
But Payne, Schultz, Beato and Gotinsky — all of the union members from both the UAW and Unifor who spoke to the Free Press — expressed a belief that there is a way that automotive manufacturing can be robust in all of North America, not just one country.
“This is really where the focus should be: How do we actually enhance manufacturing in North America, and not just destroy an industry here?” Payne said. “We’ve had an auto industry in Canada for over 100 years, and we’re going to fight to protect it.”
Schultz, speaking from the highway in Illinois, where he will soon begin work again, remains hopeful.
“If Belvidere is born again, there is always hope for others,” he said.
Liam Rappleye covers Stellantis and the UAW for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him: LRappleye@freepress.com.
