Detroit Free Press
March 17, 2025
Todd Spangler
Over an hour on Monday morning, Democratic U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Detroit Regional Chamber President and Chief Executive Officer Sandy K. Baruah and Colin Bird, the consul general of Canada stationed in Detroit, tried to get the point across that President Donald Trump’s tariffs pose a unique threat to Michigan and America’s standing in the world.
Holding a discussion at Wayne State University’s Industry Innovation Center in Detroit, the three described a rising level of unease that Trump’s tariffs on Canada are causing businesses small and large in the Great Lakes region and the near-impossibility of the U.S. abruptly moving supply lines into the country.
Trump has already imposed worldwide tariffs on aluminum and steel that hit Canada and has threatened 25% tariffs to begin in April on other imports from Canada and Mexico that could devastate the Canadian economy — which relies heavily on U.S. trade — and the economy in Michigan, which is reliant on an auto industry heavily invested in components and assemblies from both Canada and Mexico.
Baruah, who ran the Small Business Administration under former President George W. Bush and whose organization promotes commerce in southeastern Michigan, said businessmen and businesswomen who were genuinely excited about Trump’s election and what they hoped would be a pro-business atmosphere are far less sanguine now.
“What we’re hearing is it’s beginning to look a lot like COVID,” Baruah said, referring to the throttled supply lines, upended demand and confusion that came with the pandemic’s outbreak five years ago. “Business leaders are struggling with a level of uncertainty they weren’t expecting and weren’t planning for,” he said.
But the three said it’s not merely about uncertainty and the stock market dips that have come with it in recent weeks.
- Bird, who as consul general helps helm his government’s efforts to integrate in the Detroit region, said with some 7,000 trucks crossing the Detroit-Windsor corridor each day, Trump’s tariffs would “cripple” the auto industry. And while Trump has talked about using tariffs as a way to bring manufacturing back into the U.S., Bird said it would take a decade or more and billions of dollars for the U.S. to build the “six Hoover Dams” needed to produce hydroelectricity at prices comparable with Canada’s, which allows for its less expensive aluminum and steel, or to retrofit or build oil refineries capable of handling American crude oil unless it wants to import heavier crude from Venezuela.
- Slotkin said she continues to believe that tariffs can play a strategic role in national security, especially with China, but that situation changes “drastically” when considering how close a relationship the U.S. and Canada have had for more than 100 years. Meanwhile, she said she is hearing concerns from Michigan farmers, who rely on exporting products to Canada, and other companies, one a Defense Department supplier which she said told her Trump’s aluminum tariffs could force them to stop making their product. “We’re going to be paying more for everything in our life and we’re risking a self-inflicted recession,” she said.
All three also raised concerns about where a trade war with Canada could lead, with Baruah noting that there have been recent circumstances where Canadian hockey fans have booed the national anthem and Canadian shop owners, furious at Trump’s threatened tariffs and remarks that the sovereign nation should become a U.S. state, have removed American products from shelves even though they’d already purchased them.
“Over 100-plus years (we) have this unified, predictable trade relationship,” Baruah said. “If that goes away, how are we as North Americans … can we be expected to combat China? That is where we have real trade problems. … It’s really hard if we have to go do this (compete) with China alone. I can tell you right now, we’re not going to be effective.”
Bird also noted that Trump’s tariffs directly violate the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement (USMCA) that Trump himself negotiated during his first term in office and signed just five years ago, which could serve to isolate America.
“For the last two months, we’ve seen a systematic ignoring of those commitments imposed by the USMCA,” Bird said, adding that even if there is a new negotiation of trade and a new agreement reached, there is now no assurance those new commitments will be respected either.
“We’re looking at looking at significant tariffs inconsistent with the USMCA being imposed willy-nilly without regard to the commitments we negotiated,” Bird said. “That is a problem for the United States, for its credibility negotiating with the world.”