It has come to this.Ontario Premier Doug Ford is calling on Ottawa to “immediately” slap a 100% tariff on Chinese manufactured electric vehicles to protect more than $40 billion in subsidized manufacturing in his province.Ford issued a statement on Thursday calling for the Canadian government to match US import tariffs on Chinese made EVs or risk “Canadian jobs” backstopped with taxpayer dollars.“Taking every advantage of low labour standards and dirty energy, China is flooding the market with artificially cheap electric vehicles. Unless we act fast, we risk Ontario and Canadian jobs,” Ford intoned.“Now’s the time to work with our US partners to deepen and strengthen home-grown, US-Canada supply chains. Now’s the time to protect good, hard-earned Ontario and Canadian jobs by matching U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports.”.“Taking every advantage of low labour standards and dirty energy, China is flooding the market with artificially cheap electric vehicles. Unless we act fast, we risk Ontario and Canadian jobs,”Ontario Premier Doug Ford.That’s despite the fact that Chinese imports presently represent an insignificant share of the Canadian EV market. That title goes to Tesla, which by some estimates accounts for 90% of all the electric vehicles sold in Canada — a third of which are made in China after the company shifted production from California in 2023.Canada currently imposes a 6% tariff on Chinese-made vehicles, but the cars do qualify for up to $5,000 in federal rebates for EV purchases in addition to provincial incentives.In May, the US moved to quadruple the import tariff on Chinese-made EVs to 100%. President Joe Biden cited unfair subsidies from the Chinese government to Chinese EV makers while also hiking tariffs on a lengthy list of other Chinese products including solar cells, computer chips, medical equipment and lithium ion batteries..Nearly 10 million Americans and 500,000 Canadians are employed directly or indirectly in the auto industry. The sector accounts for almost 5% of the US economy and more than 2% in Canada.In May, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said “we're watching very closely what the Americans are doing," shortly after he met with US vice-president Kamala Harris on the sidelines of the Service Employees International Union convention.Canada has mandated one-fifth of all car sales must be EVs by 2026, three-fifths by 2030 and 100% by 2035. The US wants one-third of its new vehicle sales to be electric by 2032 but hasn't mandated it, unlike Canada.Fully electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles accounted for almost 11% of total new vehicle registrations in 2023 in Canada, up from 8% in 2022.
