“Whether or not they ever be put into place, the damage is done,” said Greig Mordue, a former auto industry executive and associate professor at the W. Booth School of Engineering Practice and Technology at McMaster University.

He says Trump’s threats have already changed the landscape. Whether he goes ahead with the tariffs or not, or whether he carves out specific exemptions, the threat alone will drive investment out of Canada and into the U.S.

“For at least the next four years, there will be no serious investment in the Canadian automotive industry,” said Mordue.

  • CanadaPlus
    2·
    3 days ago

    Not sure where you’re getting full Mao from

    On Lemmy, it’s as likely as not that’s what’s meant. No hate intended in either direction - this is the internet, we can talk about whatever.

    It can simply do more to offset missing private investment, instead of enduring the economic shock due to the unemployment resultant from the missing private dollars.

    Ah, so you just mean subsidies. Yes, we can do that up to a point, but the thing is you have to fund it somehow. More taxes or a higher debt load actually scare those investment dollars right off again, so at very high levels it becomes counterproductive.

    In reality, it’s not all going to go away anyway. Like you said, Canada is full of good stuff. That puts a natural floor on how much business will actually leave.

    On a separate note, speaking of public investment and crown corporations, a great way to make ourselves more efficient is to put common infrastructure (things that most need) under crown corporations which provide it at cost.

    Yes, there is a strong argument that makes sense for anything that suffers from the network effect - American social media platforms are also very relevant to what’s going on. Some things are provided below cost right now as well. Free roads and waste disposal have been blamed for too many cars and too much packaging.