What Trump’s trade war with Canada could mean for US auto buyers, workers and businesses

The tit-for-tat trade war between Washington and Ottawa took another turn in recent days after talks between the United States and Canada broke down.

On Aug. 24, President Donald Trump announced he would double existing tariffs on imports of Canadian cars, auto parts, and steel to 50%, effective Jan. 1, 2027. The next day, Canada announced retaliatory tariffs of up to 50% on some $20 billion worth of American goods, affecting a range of products that includes dairy, steel, cheese and paper items. The measure is set to take effect Sept. 8, Canadian officials said.

On his Truth Social page, Trump said: “Canada has been ripping off the United States of America for years. Their ridiculously high tariffs on our Farmers and farm products has made life impossible for these great American Patriots, and has long created a 60 Billion Dollar Deficit between our two Countries. Not sustainable, and NOT ANYMORE!”

U.S. businesses imported roughly $382 billion worth of goods from Canada last year, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, and Trump’s current tariffs apply to 5% of imports from America’s neighbor to the north.

In Ohio, which in 2025 exported some $17.5 billion in goods to Canada, more than any other state, Trump’s tariffs have cost the average household $2,274, according to data compiled by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.

In an interview with CBC News, Joe Koch, the vice-president of a Youngstown carpentry company, said: “People are just going to not build that house this year. They’re going to wait ’til interest rates lower. They’re going to wait ’til the tariffs subside or the political landscape changes.” Youngstown exports over $820 million in goods to Canada annually, CBC reported.

In an interview with the Ohio Capital Journal, Rob Moore, principal of the Columbus-based public policy organization Scioto Analysis, said Ohio exports more to Canada than do Mexico, China, France, and the United Kingdom combined.

ABC News reported that, according to the Yale Budget Lab policy research center, the average American consumer is spending about $1,100 more per year than they would if there were no tariffs on U.S. imports.

Matthew Metzgar, an economics professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, told the American Independent that economists generally view tariffs as a negative. “They raise prices for consumers; that leads to less goods being bought, and therefore the markets are shrinking. You have less total revenue, less goods being sold,” he said.

Metzgar said, “A lot of U.S. jobs are dependent on vehicles that are built, again, across three different countries, and so if you’re working in Michigan and you’re making car parts for a car built in Canada, and now these sales are dropping due to the tariffs, well now that can affect U.S. manufacturing jobs because again, a lot of these people working on these cars and selling parts and so on and so forth, it’s all a big web between Mexico, U.S. and Canada.”

According to the website Trading Economics, in 2025 the U.S. imported over $25 billion worth of cars from Canada, down from over $43 billion worth in 2014.

Metzgar said it’s a myth that tariffs protect American industries or help them develop, because even if the U.S. were to try to manufacture everything it currently imports, the infrastructure simply isn’t in place to do so.

“The U.S. can’t just automatically create millions more vehicles the next month,” he said. “It takes years to build up and get the capacity for whatever you’re trying to make;, you can’t do that overnight. And so there’s been no evidence that these tariffs are going to just suddenly create or rebuild a dying industry,” Metzgar said.