Time For Canada To Dump The Big Three & Go Electric With China or let Mark Carney steer Canada back to the glorious Stone Age where electricity is nothing burger… Carney has No Idea, No Plan, No Nothing to deal with Trump Tariffs

It’s highly unlikely President Trump will waive or extend the 25% auto tariffs on Canada any further.

Here’s the current landscape:

✅ Bottom line

• No further extensions: By early June, Trump appeared ready to enforce global tariff deadlines (e.g., July 9) and showed little patience for delays or carve-outs

• Trump’s willingness to pause in March was temporary and strategic, not a shift in policy.

• Given the paused trade talks, his hardline stance on digital-services tax, and looming global deadlines, there’s no clear indication he’ll wave the 25% tariffs on Canadian autos anytime soon.

We’re hitting on a very real strategic inflection point for Canada’s auto industry. Here’s an honest breakdown of how this could unfold, what the risks are, and why the “invite Chinese EVs” option might be both logical and politically explosive:

🇨🇦 Auto Tariffs Impact – What’s at Stake for Canada

📉 Immediate Consequences

• 25% U.S. tariffs on Canadian-built vehicles make them uncompetitive in the U.S., which absorbs more than 80% of Canada’s auto exports.

• Ford, GM, Stellantis have no long-term economic incentive to keep full-scale production in Canada if cross-border trade becomes prohibitively expensive.

• Layoffs are accelerating in Ontario, especially in Windsor, Oshawa, and Ingersoll. Unifor is already warning of “mass industry flight.”

🚫 Canada’s Market Size Problem

• Canada sells ~1.6 million vehicles annually, compared to 15–17 million in the U.S.

• That volume isn’t enough to support full production capacity for a wide range of models domestically.

• Canada lacks the kind of self-contained market scale that allows countries like China, the U.S., or even Germany to sustain full supply chains.

🏭 Strategic Pivot: Invite Chinese EV Makers?

✅ Why It Makes Sense

• Chinese automakers like BYD, Geely, NIO, XPeng are:

  • Looking to expand abroad due to saturation and price wars in China.

  • Technologically advanced and vertically integrated.

  • Desperate for onshore production access to North America due to Trump’s likely global tariffs.

• Canada could offer:

  • Market access to parts of the U.S. via NAFTA/USMCA loopholes or workarounds (though risky).

  • Cheap clean electricity for EV battery production.

  • Talent pool and union labor with existing auto experience.

🧠 Bottom Line

If the U.S. stays firm on tariffs, Canada can’t save its legacy auto industry by itself. It will have to choose between:

• Accepting a smaller, niche domestic auto sector, or

• Making a risky but potentially transformative bet by inviting Chinese or non-U.S. automakers to build here—knowing it could permanently alienate Washington.

Here’s a scoop on the subject matter:-

Time For Canada To Dump The Big Three & Go Electric With China

Mark Carney, Canada’s freshly minted Prime Minister, faces an early test of leadership courtesy of the country’s automotive old guard. Ford, GM, and Stellantis have banded together to ask his government to scrap Canada’s zero-emission vehicle mandate, pleading poverty and technological impossibility. Apparently, after a mere century of automotive innovation, these giants have forgotten how to build cars unless they’re permitted to keep belching emissions indefinitely. Their preferred business model involves Canada indefinitely subsidizing nostalgia, rather than seizing an obvious electric future.

Let’s be clear. The global automotive market is electrifying quickly, not slowly. Norway is already at nearly 100% electric passenger vehicle sales. China is at 50% of new vehicles being electric. Nepal — Nepal! Sherpas and Mount Everest Nepal! — is seeing 70% of new cars being fully electric now. Europe, China, and the rest of the world have decided that electric is not optional, it is inevitable.

Canada’s Big Three subsidiaries seem to be the last ones clinging desperately to internal combustion engines. Their request to Prime Minister Carney is transparently regressive, like Kodak asking governments to ban digital photography or Blockbuster demanding protection from streaming.

Ironically, these automakers’ insistence on business-as-usual threatens precisely the thing they claim to want: a prosperous Canadian automotive sector. Instead of confronting their own stagnation, they have elected to hold Canada hostage. The message is stark: give us special dispensation to fail, or our factories will fall silent and perhaps be withdrawn entirely. At least it’s an honest threat, albeit breathtakingly entitled.

Meanwhile, China, the world’s EV leader, has quietly marched into global markets with precisely the vehicles Canada needs. Chinese companies like BYD and Yutong are not promising future EV models, they’re shipping them by the millions today. BYD alone now makes more electric cars in one year than the Big Three combined might optimistically achieve in half a decade. The company has factories everywhere, including, astonishingly, in Pakistan.

Yes, Pakistan, which until recently wasn’t even known for having much of an automotive industry, now proudly hosts a BYD assembly facility which will be producing cutting-edge electric vehicles in early 2026. How is it conceivable that Canada, a nation with a century-long automotive manufacturing tradition, still hasn’t landed a single major Chinese EV factory?

We have game in this regard. Canada welcomed Japanese car manufacturers beginning in the mid-1980s. Honda was the first to open a Canadian manufacturing plant, starting production at its facility in Alliston, Ontario, in November 1986. Toyota followed closely behind, opening its Cambridge, Ontario, plant in November 1988. Korean automaker Hyundai established its first Canadian assembly plant in Bromont, Quebec, in 1989, though it closed in 1993 due to financial difficulties.

If Canadian automotive leaders truly prefer to stick their heads in the sand, perhaps it’s time Prime Minister Carney let them. Why not invite BYD or XPeng to take over idle or soon-to-be idle facilities in Windsor or Oakville? Imagine BYD Seals rolling off lines in Oshawa or XPeng SUVs streaming from factories once dedicated to Stellantis minivans.

Canadian-made Yutong electric buses could rapidly replace the aging diesel fleet polluting our cities. They would be cheaper and far better than the inferior and expensive products from the other retrograde Canadian manufacturer, New Flyer, which continues to push diesel, CNG, and hydrogen buses instead of focusing on making superior battery electric transit vehicles. These are not futuristic fantasies; they are existing products waiting only for a willing partner in North America. Canada should leap at this opportunity rather than continue subsidizing complacency. Get Winnipeg on board by having the Yutong factory there employing the local skilled workforce that New Flyer isn’t putting on electric bus lines, or put Yutong in Bromont in Quebec, leveraging the skilled and international workforce there.

Sure, critics might decry welcoming Chinese manufacturers as controversial or politically challenging. Yet the alternative — clinging to outdated automakers that refuse to acknowledge reality — is even less attractive. Canada cannot build an economy on nostalgia or wishful thinking, particularly when the rest of the world is racing ahead. The automotive market has spoken loudly: the future is electric, and rapidly coming. The only real choice is whether Canada is part of that future, or simply a cautionary tale of industrial irrelevance.

Prime Minister Carney has a rare opportunity to act decisively. The Big Three have made their stance painfully clear: they have no credible roadmap to electrification. Their business model is fundamentally rooted in delay, not transformation. Canada, however, cannot afford to wait. With abundant clean electricity, a skilled workforce, and all the natural resources needed for battery production, Canada’s potential is staggering. It’s not unreasonable to insist that automakers leverage these assets or step aside for someone who will.

The absurdity here is not merely that the Big Three are refusing to pivot, but that Canada, even now, has to listen politely as they explain why failure is unavoidable. The automotive establishment is openly demanding permission to lose and to lose badly. Perhaps we should take them at their word and allow more capable companies to step in. A BYD factory operates profitably in Lahore, Pakistan, yet Canada is still waiting for permission from Detroit headquarters to build modern electric cars. There is no polite Canadian euphemism strong enough to describe this level of strategic incompetence.

There is a middle way here, as a note. Stellantis has forged partnerships with Chinese firms in Spain, most prominently through its joint venture with CATL to build a lithium-iron-phosphate battery factory in Zaragoza, slated to begin production by late 2026. The €4.1 billion investment positions the facility to reach up to 50 GWh in capacity, bolstering Stellantis’s electric vehicle offerings with locally sourced, lower-cost batteries while leveraging Spain’s clean energy infrastructure and regional support.

Meanwhile, Stellantis is partnering with Chinese EV maker Leapmotor, based on an existing Chinese JV relationship, on assembly of its B10 crossover at a Spanish plant under a roughly $200 million investment, with mass production projected for early 2026. Together, these moves signal Stellantis’s strategic pivot: integrating Chinese battery technology and EV production into its European manufacturing footprint, marking a deeper alignment with the rapid electrification trend and China’s leading role in EV innovation.

Carney could divide and conquer, cutting Stellantis away from the pack. He should ignore the Canadian subsidiary leadership, who have no power and no future, and talk to the brand new global CEO, Antonio Filosa. He should make it clear he expects Stellantis to bring Chinese technology to Ontario and Quebec, just as it is bringing it to Spain. He should cut a deal that keeps Canadian jobs and seriously upgrades the technology that Canadian workers engage with, and bring in factories that will still have a vital economic role in 2040.

The current American isolationism and thrashing won’t end. Making deals with Trump requires a clear BATNA — best alternative to a negotiated agreement — that is right in his face. If Canada has no alternative, Trump wins, and Canada has an alternative. Canada’s clean electricity advantage and skilled workforce can do what American and European legacy OEMs are failing to do quickly: build the cars of the future for North American and European markets.

Mark Carney came to power on a promise of forward-looking economic leadership. His administration can now make a clear statement: Canada will no longer beg automakers to do what is clearly in their own long-term interest. Either Ford, GM, and Stellantis step fully and unequivocally into the electric age, or Canada should invite the true automotive innovators of our time to occupy those factories and reshape this sector for the better. If Canada wants a car industry that survives and thrives, it must be an industry that builds electric vehicles, and builds them right now.

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O Canada, Go Chinese EV Or Join Trump To Go Back To Stone Age