Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre crossed from Windsor to Michigan on Oct. 13 to sell his Tariff-Free Auto Pact to General Motors, Ford, and electrical workers’ union representatives. The trip came 454 days after the end of the 30-day window Prime Minister Mark Carney and President Donald Trump set for a trade deal in June 2025, and with Windsor’s Stellantis plant facing three more weeks of shutdown.
The Liberal government has failed the auto industry, and Poilievre’s plan would do little to repair that failure. It rests on the same production-for-access bargain that Washington has already treated as discrimination. Both leaders should give auto workers specific terms before the threatened U.S. tariff increase on Jan. 1, 2027.
The Liberal record
On June 16, 2025, Carney and Trump “agreed to pursue negotiations toward a deal within the coming 30 days,” according to the Prime Minister’s readout. That window closed in mid-July 2025, and by Oct. 13, 2026 there had been no deal for 454 days after it. On Aug. 21, 2026, Carney suspended the talks and recalled Canada’s negotiators, citing “last-minute changes in the U.S. proposed terms.”
Canadian-made vehicles have faced a 25 per cent U.S. tariff on their non-U.S. content since April 2025, and the cost is landing in Windsor. Stellantis said on Oct. 2 that its Windsor Assembly Plant, with more than 6,400 employees, would be down the weeks of Oct. 19, Oct. 26, and Nov. 2, after those workers had already been laid off for the two weeks before Oct. 5, CBC News reported. The company cited “consumer demand and the impact of tariffs.”
Carney has defended the delay. “Throughout, our goal has been to secure the best deal for Canadians, never a deal at any price or on any deadline,” he said on Aug. 21. Carney set the 30-day deadline himself, and 53 days after he walked away, he had named no terms for returning beyond his remark in Lévis on Aug. 24 that Canada would come back when Americans showed “the right attitude towards our industries and a true partnership,” as the Ottawa Citizen reported. One reason he has left the terms open may be that naming them would set a new deadline he could again miss.
What the Conservative pact would do
The party’s March plan would let a manufacturer sell one vehicle duty-free in Canada from a CUSMA partner for each vehicle it builds here, dollar for dollar. It would also remove the GST from Canadian-made vehicles, end federal EV mandates and subsidies, keep the 75 per cent North American content rule, and ban vehicles using Chinese- or Russian-connected software, with a stated goal of two million vehicles a year within a decade. “The more an automaker produces in Canada, the more it can sell in Canada,” Poilievre said in Windsor, the Toronto Sun reported.
Washington has already objected to that link. Canada gives each automaker a confidential duty-free quota that, in the U.S. government’s words, is “granted to induce companies to invest in production in Canada,” and the U.S. cited those quotas in Proclamation 11048, which imposed duties to offset what it called Canadian discrimination against U.S. commerce in motor vehicles. A rule that formalizes the same link between Canadian production and Canadian sales would, in my reading, hand the administration a larger version of the grievance it has already acted on.
The pact also works on the smaller market. The government says more than 90 per cent of Canadian-made vehicles go to the United States, so the Windsor shifts depend on what the U.S. lets in. A Canadian rule on what Canadians may buy leaves that U.S. decision where it is.
The government side’s objection
Liberal MP Dominique O’Rourke told the House on March 24, “What they are proposing risks weakening Canada’s position in CUSMA negotiations, and the GST proposal could be seen as a non-tariff barrier.” Her first point restates the CUSMA risk set out above, and her second applies the same logic to a tax break that favours Canadian-made vehicles. She also read in the words of Unifor Local 200 president John D’Agnolo, who said the one-for-one rule “would mean they wouldn’t need to put a product in Brampton,” where Stellantis’s plant has been idle since 2023.
O’Rourke’s objection holds on the trade risk, and it also likely served the government by shifting debate from its missed deadline to the opposition’s plan. Her case leaves the Liberal record where the previous section found it, with no deal and no terms for resuming talks.
Poilievre’s reply is that the trade war itself is the problem. “I think we’re going there to fight for tariff-free trade on both sides of the border and Americans want lower prices and more jobs and we’re offering a plan for them to have both,” he said in Windsor, The Canadian Press reported. He took that case directly to American employers and workers, and one reason for the trip is likely to build an American audience for a plan that Liberals in Ottawa have opposed. Trump adviser Peter Navarro had recently warned, as CP reported it, that Canada would pay a price for any interference in the U.S. midterms.
What the trip cannot settle
What Poilievre heard in Detroit and Dearborn has not been reported, and the outcome of the meetings is unknown. Trump wrote on Truth Social on Aug. 24 that tariffs on cars, trucks, parts, and steel “will be increased to 50%” on Jan. 1, 2027, as quoted by CBC News and the Ottawa Citizen.
The threatened increase on Jan. 1, 2027 is the next fixed date for Windsor’s auto workers. Before then, Poilievre should publish how his one-for-one rule would treat production quotas the U.S. has already penalized, and how it would keep a product at Brampton. Carney should get back to the negotiating table.
