TORONTO: The leader of Canada’s most populous province called for economic retaliation on the US after auto company Stellantis said it was moving planned production of its Jeep Compass from Canada to the US
Ontario Premier Doug Ford blamed US President Donald Trump for the company’s decision this week to shift production of the SUV from Brampton, Ontario, to Illinois as part of plan to invest $13 billion to expand its manufacturing capacity in the United States.
The comments come as Canada is negotiating to reduce tariffs. Trump has been urging the Big 3 American automakers to move production to the US
“That guy, President Trump, he’s a real piece of work,” Ford said. “I’m sick and tired of rolling over. We need to fight back.”
Ford said Canada needs to hit back with tariffs if Prime Minister Mark Carney can’t reach a trade deal with Trump.
Dominic LeBlanc, the minister responsible for Canada-US trade, is in Washington this week for talks to reduce tariffs on certain sectors. Carney left Washington last week without a deal.
Carney said the move by the world’s fourth-largest carmaker was a direct consequence of tariffs and his government would work with Stellantis to create new opportunities in the Brampton area. Carney added that Ottawa expects Stellantis to fulfill its commitment to Brampton workers. The federal government threatened legal action against the company.
Federal Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said the production shift is “unacceptable” and warned Stellantis made commitments to Canadian production in exchange for substantial financial support.
“Anything short of fulfilling that commitment will be considered as default under our agreements,” Joly wrote in a letter to the company chief executive.
Fear has spread in Ontario over what will happen to Canada’s auto sector. Autos are Canada’s second-largest export and Carney has noted the sector employs 125,000 Canadians directly and almost another 500,000 in related industries.
“Stellantis is bowing at the Trump administration with this pledge of massive investments in the US,” Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
“If this bullying tactic works with Stellantis I expect it to be replicated to every other automaker that has a presence in Canada and frankly other sectors that the US has an interest in.”
Workers at the Stellantis assembly plant in Brampton were greeted Wednesday with a robocall from their employer that said work they’d been waiting for wouldn’t be coming back. The company closed the factory in 2023 and laid off its roughly 3,000 workers as it retooled the facility.
Stellantis said it would reopen its Belvidere Assembly Plant in Illinois to expand US Jeep production, creating thousands of new jobs there.
Vito Beato, president of Unifor Local 1285, which represents the Brampton plant workers, said the news came as a surprise because Stellantis had said previously it was committed to producing its Jeep Compass in Brampton.
Stellantis said it continues to invest in Canada, including adding a third shift to the Windsor, Ontario assembly plant, and that it is in talks with the government on the future of the Brampton facility.
Carney won the country’s election earlier this year fueled by Trump’s annexation threats and trade war, but has tried to improve relations ahead of a review of the free trade deal next year. More than 75 percent of Canada’s exports go to the US and Canada recently dropped many of its retaliatory tariffs to match US tariff exemptions for goods covered under the United States-Mexico-Canada trade pact.
Ford said Canada should start responding to Trump’s tariffs with its own harsh measures.
“That’s the only thing that this person understands,” Ford said of Trump. Ford is scheduled to meet with Carney this week.
Ontario premier criticizes Trump after Stellantis says it will move production from Canada to the US
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Ontario premier criticizes Trump after Stellantis says it will move production from Canada to the US
- “That guy, President Trump, he’s a real piece of work,” Ford said
Italian police fire tear gas as protesters clash near Winter Olympics hockey venue
- Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue
MILAN: Italian police fired tear gas and a water cannon at dozens of protesters who threw firecrackers and tried to access a highway near a Winter Olympics venue on Saturday.
The brief confrontation came at the end of a peaceful march by thousands against the environmental impact of the Games and the presence of US agents in Italy.
Police held off the violent demonstrators, who appeared to be trying to reach the Santagiulia Olympic ice hockey rink, after the skirmish. By then, the larger peaceful protest, including families with small children and students, had dispersed.
Earlier, a group of masked protesters had set off smoke bombs and firecrackers on a bridge overlooking a construction site about 800 meters (a half-mile) from the Olympic Village that’s housing around 1,500 athletes.
Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue. A heavy police presence guarded the entire route.
There was no indication that the protest and resulting road closure interfered with athletes’ transfers to their events, all on the outskirts of Milan.
The demonstration coincided with US Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Milan as head of the American delegation that attended the opening ceremony on Friday.
He and his family visited Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” closer to the city center, far from the protest, which also was against the deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to provide security to the US delegation.
US Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit that focuses on cross-border crimes, frequently sends its officers to overseas events like the Olympics to assist with security. The ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdown in the US is known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there is no indication its officers are being sent to Italy.
At the larger, peaceful demonstration, which police said numbered 10,000, people carried cardboard cutouts to represent trees felled to build the new bobsled run in Cortina. A group of dancers performed to beating drums. Music blasted from a truck leading the march, one a profanity-laced anti-ICE anthem.
“Let’s take back the cities and free the mountains,” read a banner by a group calling itself the Unsustainable Olympic Committee. Another group called the Association of Proletariat Excursionists organized the cutout trees.
“They bypassed the laws that usually are needed for major infrastructure project, citing urgency for the Games,” said protester Guido Maffioli, who expressed concern that the private entity organizing the Games would eventually pass on debt to Italian taxpayers.
Homemade signs read “Get out of the Games: Genocide States, Fascist Police and Polluting Sponsors,” the final one a reference to fossil fuel companies that are sponsors of the Games. One woman carried an artificial tree on her back decorated with the sign: “Infernal Olympics.”
The demonstration followed another last week when hundreds protested the deployment of ICE agents.
Like last week, demonstrators Saturday said they were opposed to ICE agents’ presence, despite official statements that a small number of agents from an investigative arm would be present in US diplomatic territory, and not operational on the streets.
