Is UAW support for Trump’s Canadian tariffs ultimately a turf battle?

March 20, 2025 Steve Current Events 1
UAW President Shawn Fain

The United Auto Workers’ endorsement of Trump’s tariffs makes at least some sense when applied to a low-wage nation such as Mexico, but why Canada?

The UAW (2025) has thus far framed its support as a way of attacking “free trade,” which the union says has led to a “non-stop race to the bottom by killing good blue-collar jobs in America to go exploit some poor worker in another country by paying poverty wages.”

The problem with such a broad-brush argument is that Trump’s tariffs may actually fuel a “race to the bottom” between Canada and the United States. This is because the average per-hour auto worker cost $35.96 in Canada — substantially higher than $21.34 in the U.S. and $2.30 in Mexico. Note that all of these figures are from 2018 and in U.S. dollars (Statista, 2024).

If the UAW (2025) is so committed to using tariffs to undo “the injustice of anti-worker trade deals,” why would it undercut unionized Canadian auto workers, who have arguably been more successful than their U.S. counterparts in bargaining with automakers?

Canadian Auto Workers on parade
Canadian Auto Workers at a Labor Day parade in 2011 (CAW Media via Wikipedia).

Why would UAW support cutting higher-paying jobs?

“It’s a little puzzling to see the UAW aligning itself with far-right Republican policy and sort of throwing their union brethren under the bus,” said Peter Frise, an auto industry expert at the University of Windsor. “But I guess you have to look at it from several different ways” (Loop, 2025).

A Reddit commentator summed up the most cynical rationale: “Unions are self interested and their only concern is to grow the unionized employee base they represent, regardless of outside consequences” (CFPrick, 2025).

The irony here is that for decades Canadian auto workers were represented by the UAW. However, in the 1980s they became frustrated with the union’s bargaining concessions to automakers, so broke away to form their own union — the Canadian Auto Workers (Loop, 2025). That union morphed into Unifor (2025), which says it is Canada’s largest union in the private sector, representing 320,000 workers in a variety of industries.

“America does not have a monopoly on auto production,” said Unifor National President Lana Payne. “Canada has been manufacturing vehicles for over a century, and we are the largest Detroit Three purchasing market outside of the U.S. These are our jobs, and we will defend them with everything we have. You sell here, you must also build here” (Unifor, 2025).

Automobiles are Canada’s top-ranked export to the U.S., according to Unifor. Even so, the number of Canadians who have been employed by the Big Three has fallen by more than half between 1993 and 2016, from 52,000 to 23,000 workers. In addition, Canada makes up 6 percent of North American auto jobs while generating 9 percent of vehicle sales (Unifor, 2017).

Trump negotiated a trade deal he now denounces

Tension between Unifor and the UAW spiked after the latter union’s President Shawn Fain endorsed the Trump administration’s tariffs on Canadian imports, which include 25-percent levies on automobiles and parts (Wayland, 2025).

Fain had previously criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. Unifor also supported renegotiating the deal during Trump’s first term, arguing that it had led to a shift in production out of Canada and the U.S. to Mexico because of lower wages and minimal regulation (Unifor, 2017).

In 2020 Trump negotiated the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. He described the treaty as “the most modern, up-to-date, and balanced trade agreement in the history of our country, with the most advanced protections for workers ever developed” (Trumpwhitehousearchives.gov, 2018).

Also see ‘Why are auto industry and media so surprised by Trump’s tariffs?’

Now that Trump is back in office he has denounced the deal and unilaterally imposed a series of tariffs, which resulted in Canadian retaliatory measures that Trump responded to by doubling tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

Where does this spiraling trade war end? That’s hard to say in light of Trump’s insistence that Canada become our 51st state (Forster, 2025). All that has done is infuriate Canadians — and undermine one of the U.S.’s most enduring alliances.

“If he wanted Canada — if he really wanted it — he’s harmed the prospects of Canada being the 51st state by the way he’s approached it,” John Bolton told NBC News. Bolton was a national security adviser during Trump’s first term (Smith and Nicholas, 2025). Nobody responds well to bullying.

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1 Comment

  1. The UAW capitulating to trump only serves to alienate my country, Canada, further, and is evidence of a willful desire to ignore the realities of the integration of vehicle manufacturing in North America. GM, Ford & Stellantis aren’t about to suddenly build new factories in the US. If they were able to do, would the UAW agree to wages = to Mexico as a concession to build new factories? Just like the cybertruck, I see this endorsement by the UAW as little more than stunting and posturing.

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