Doug Ford doesn’t like Canada’s new trade agreement with China
The premier said the agreement is a “mess”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford is not pleased about Prime Minister Mark Carney’s trade agreement with China. Announced today, the tariff‑quota agreement will permit 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles into the Canadian market at significantly lowered tariff rates.
Ford’s position is that the deal will undermine the automotive industry in Ontario and put Canadian jobs at risk. “This was not thought out properly,” Ford told reporters. “It was a knee-jerk reaction, as far as I’m concerned, and this is going to be a big, big problem.”
Ford said more in a statement posted to social media: “To fix this mess, Prime Minister Carney and the federal government need to urgently step up and support Ontario’s auto sector. That means making the sector more competitive by ending the electric vehicle mandate, harmonizing regulations with key trading partners and scrapping federal fees that do nothing but add thousands to the cost of making vehicles and chase away investments. Instead of importing made-in-China vehicles, the federal government needs to be focused on working with Ontario to bring investment and jobs to factory floors in Brampton, Oshawa, Ingersoll and across the province, where assembly lines are at risk or have already left the country,” he wrote.
Ford has been vocal about Canada’s international trade agreements, particularly with the US. Last year, he went so far as to place an anti-tariff television commercial on US networks, which prompted President Donald Trump to post that “ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED.”
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
