Nearly two-thirds of Canadians support tariff on Chinese-made EVs, poll finds
The survey by Nanos Research for The Globe and Mail found 43 per cent of respondents say they support the move, while 20 per cent say they somewhat support the measure
Canadians don't like buying things made in China despite buying the majority of our goods from China.
I have no idea if you think we should buy less from China, or stop complaining about buying from China, but either way you're right about the hypocrisy, or at least lack of self awareness.
Yeah, it's unfortunate that a lot of things not-made-in-China simply don't exist here.
In this instance, I think people need to separate the art from the artist so to speak. The Chinese EV's are already doing well in other countries and it can't only be because they are cheaper though I'll admit that is likely a large factor. Why not buy the best product for your money?
I think the tariff should come with a mandate to our domestic car manufacturers. They should have to produce an EV under some cost within a certain amount of time or they are going to cancel the tariff.
Why? We don't have any Canadian EV competition to protect.
I don't want an EV, I want HSR, extensive local train networks, trams and LRTs, good buses and bikelanes.
The same people that are opposed to the carbon tax because it makes things more expensive, go figure...
Yah, and now we have China looking to restrict canola imports in retribution, something of actual value to the Canadian economy, unlike our non-existent EV industry. There will be massive costs to agriculture from this stupidity, and it's all for image points, not anything useful.
For reference sake, agriculture contributed $42 billion to Canada's GDP in 2023. I can't find any numbers for EV because I suspect it doesn't exist.
The total new car market for 2023 was almost $90 billion. Of that, EV sales count for about 10.7%, or about $9.5 billion. Stats Can provides the first number, electricautonomy.ca was the source for the second, although they got their info from Stats Can, too.
There are a number of possible errors with this data, such as the percentage of EV sales being total sales vs. dollar sales, which would increase the amount spent on EVs since they tend to be more expensive.
And how much of that is built or sourced in Canada? Thats what we would be trying to protect when we do this. And to my knowledge, its negligible. What we're doing is appeasing the US at the cost of agricultural exports, exactly as we did when we arrested the Huawei exec that they had conveniently let across the border in order to create strife.
Govt: We’re switching to electric. Buy an EV!
Consumers: Buy Chinese affordable EV
Govt: Not like that!
Canadian consumers: I want to pay double.
Manufacturers: we'll build more, even bigger SUVs and trucks!!
Preface: I do not like what domestic autos are building. I do not like F-150, RAM. I do not like SUVs either. We're building and driving way too large cars that impact us negatively in multiple ways. BTW almost all Japanese cars are made in North America too. Many of them in Canada.
I see a few people talk about the non-existence of a Canadian EV industry so writing here instead of replying individually.
From Wikipedia:
Automotive manufacturing is one of Canada's largest industrial sectors, accounting for 10% of manufacturing GDP and 23% of manufacturing trade. Canada produces passenger vehicles, trucks and buses, auto parts and systems, truck bodies and trailers, as well as tires and machine, tools, dies and molds (MTDM). The auto industry directly employs more than 125,000 people in vehicle assembly and auto parts manufacturing, and another 380,000 in distribution and aftermarket sales and service.
Many of the manufacturing jobs are well paid union jobs and most will transition to building EVs long term.
EV manufacturing is still being built out. There is significant investment in the pipeline. There's likely more to come (to Canada) if Harris wins the US election. Many are battery plants but those will feed into North American EVs whether built in Canada, US or Mexico. These vehicles will sell in North America too. If there's no market for them, there's no need for the battery manufacturing either. There's no need for the jobs. The incomes that feed into the automaker adjacent communities dries up. Other parts of the local economies contract because of that. The extra income from the savings from buying Chinese EVs might not be enough to replace the loss. We also lose the ability to make EVs long term which increases our dependence on China, regardless of whether you like China or not.
Someone mentioned forcing domestic autos to make smaller and cheaper EVs. I think that's a grand idea. Likely not gonna happen with an LPC/CPC gov't but still.
Another way to get smaller and cheaper EVs without deindustrializing parts of Canada would be to force China's EV makers to open factories in Canada. Cheap and small Canadian-made BYD would still be cheaper and smaller than large and expensive EVs. If the North American autos refuse to make them and fail at the hands of domestic BYD, the existing workers will be able to staff BYDs new factories at decent wages duo to collective bargaining and we'll retain the ability to build EVs in Canada long term. If something happens with China in two decades and 95% of all vehicles come from these factories, we still have the factories and workers, we can run them without China if needed and keep our car-dependent economy going. So how do we force BYD to open up shop in Canada? Tariffs. This is already happening in the EU. BYD will be building factories in Hungary and Turkey. There's talk of another in Italy.
If we made no vehicles in Canada, had no significant number of workers doing it, had no reasonable prospects of building the cars that will be driven 20 years from now, then tariffs on Chinese EVs today would be completely counterproductive.
I’m in the “somewhat support the measure”
We do manufacture cars here. We are also building battery manufacturing infrastructure. We should be supporting local industry, because cars aren’t just one thing, they have complex supply chains that we should protect instead of finalizing the offshoring process.
That being said, where the heck have North American car manufacturers been on this? Electric cars are priced as luxury cars here. A Chevy Volt is $41,500. A BYD Seagull would cost $15,000, with about the same range. It’s no wonder they’re shitting their pants.
It’s not like BYD just showed up one day with a line of cars, where was Chevy’s research department the last decade?
Where can you get a BYD Seagull outside of China for that price? When they install all the required safety features, it's much closer to 20k Euros (30k CAD).
That's still a little cheaper than anything we have here, but not so much cheaper that it's worth the human rights violations and loss of local industry.
The BYD only costs $15k because the workers on it's supply chain are making pennies on the dollar compared to NA, the quality control throughout the supply chain is garbage, and the Chinese government subsidises exports for the express purpose of killing the industry of other countries.
If we did all those things we could probably have a NA built EV for $15k as well.
The first two (labour and quality control) aren't really what affect the MSRP. Labour makes a difference, but it' materials cost that really drives price, and QA isn't really the differentiator you might think.
But that last one--government support--that makes a massive difference. China has been, and continues to be, very strategic throughout the entire supply chain, from security raw materials at low cost, to building transport and energy infrastructure, to setting up hub-and-spoke centres for OEMs and suppliers, to securing a labour force. Non-Chinese OEMs, and especially Americans that depend on tax rebates little else, can't compete.
It wouldn't hurt the American and Canadian governments to twist the arm of industry and get them to think a little more long-term. They won't, of course, because of neoliberal capture, but they could.
People don't understand tariffs.
Gotta protect all those Canadian car manufacturers like...like uhhh...Might-E Truck
Might-E Trucks are pretty awesome, but I'm definitely not going to be commuting on the TCH in one.
Too many people watching Donald Trump on TV. No matter what your politics, he has done just catastrophic damage to how people think tariffs work, who pays for them ( like actually pays the money directly ), and whose economy gets hurt as a result.
What's horrible is that Trump's misunderstanding of how tariffs work is only forgotten by how much he doesn't understand about how viruses and vaccines and health policy works.
Had it not been for the pandemic, he was well on his way to crashing the global economy, between the reckless tax cuts, deregulation and slapdash tariffs. Ironically, the stimulus spending necessitated by the pandemic probably saved him--and all of us--from the second great depression.
Or subsidized industries.
It's the zeitgeist, right? More protectionism, both for geopolitical reasons and (fake) economic reasons