Canada has something like 500k jobs tied up in the automobile industry. This plays a larger role in the decision than “US strategy” but I am assuming with this stupid trade war it can tip the balance to reducing that tariff.
Carney also has to play a balancing act of western vs central Canadian interests. Oil & gas & canola are on the table here, and it's a dangerous situation. If we lean hard into trying to prop up Ontario's auto-sector we cause a serious crisis for prairie canola farmers, etc.
Both China and the US know this and are playing cat and mouse with us, fanning tensions, and the US is outright funding western separatists and encouraging grievance politics around their resource exports. The US has aggressively tariffed manufactured goods coming out of central Canada (and forestry out of BC) while leaving potash and oil & gas out of AB/SK untouched while simultaneously outright funding far right groups there that are are agitating against Canadian unity.
At the same time China has slapped tariffs on canola and made it clear that EV tariffs are part of the calculus there.
I don't see an easy way out of this. As a resident of Ontario I'd be sad to see the auto sector here go, and it would lead to massive economic devastation here ... but it feels entirely inevitable at this point. Not just because of tariffs but because the actual products from the Big3 automakers are increasingly mediocre and what they're producing here is on the whole not fine, sustainable, products anyways.
Car parts, and Honda & Toyota plants are another story, maybe.
