QOTD: How Will The China/Canada Deal Affect The Auto Industry?
There's been a big trade deal between Canada and China -- and opinions seem mixed.
Now I am asking you guys for your opinion -- will this deal help or hurt the automotive industry? Will it help Canada or hurt Canada? Will it help the American industry or hurt it? Will it help one at the expense of another? And so on and so forth.
I understand that this topic is divisive -- play nice in the comments. The banhammer is in position.
You know what to do. Sound off below.
[Image: Travel mania/Shutterstock.com]
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Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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Comments
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Canada and others are going to cozy up to China no matter what, it's who owns their politicians. EU wants all EV and all batteries from China. Canada will do what China tells them here just like the EU did.
What's the impact?
Promises of cheaper cars, probably get some cheaper cars from it, but robots will take the jobs in country making those cars and the increased competition, and Trump tariffs, will close up other Canadian auto plants as they move south or just can't hit the robot car price point - leading to the very predictable and intended result of making the population more dependent on the government through engineered job losses. Then the most important part, is for the pols and media to pretend they didn't know and the next plan will certainly fix the issue - only to drain worse.
This is the playbook.
In 2 years time there will be a few chinese cars on the road, potentially with a terrible reputation for not operating in brutal winters or a battery fire that took out an entire condo tower in downtown Toronto etc. Trump will be done and there will be a new administration. Canada could very likely just go back to building American cars for Canada, IN Canada like they use to. The plants are still there, Canada buys 100,000 US cars per month (the only country outside the US that buys in such volume), more than enough for a few flex plants that can build F150's, SUV and a small truck or CUV. Same at Dodge and Chevy. Life goes on.