Canada unveils auto industry plan in latest pivot away from US | Hacker News Reader

Canada unveils auto industry plan in latest pivot away from US

bbc.com

10 pointsbreve4 comments

I think the goal is to keep Canadians working and thus the tax base. Being lashed to the us, at the moment, is a recipe for disaster. Being lashed to the three us carmakers, unfortunately, isn’t much better given their worldwide difficulties. There’s a base of workers who bend metal and this community can be applied to alternatives while they exist. Military hardware, commercial vehicles, things that float, etc.

HN is an ironic place to have these discussions, as it’s businesses are the reason 20th century things like bending metal are in decline.

the "base of workers who bend metal" are not very adaptable, I have interviewed dozens of them, perhaps close to 100 since the tarrifs and not one has experience beyond the assembly line job they were trained to do, and the calls from trade school students and teachers are for people with zero experience, and as my phone keeps ringing from large companys trying to find metal work sub contractors(or employees), the base then appears to be thin, to non existant at least for non assembly line work,and many of the assembly line workers, have the comunication skills of , of, of, well, words fail, ok, if they get any question ,request for detail, or friction at all, they hang up or ghost, all they want is how much, start now, zero ability to describe what they can do. To be clear,just realised that I know many animals that are better comported, personable, able to express themselves and understand instructions than many of these "benders", not kidding.

I don’t blame Canada for making changes in trade agreements and domestic policies in response to the sudden betrayal by Trump’s America. But at the same time, the strategy in the article feels random. So China can sell cars in Canada and how does Canada’s car industry gain from that? Encouraging South Korean auto makers to build in Canada would make sense, except that they’d also face tariffs when selling to consumers in America right? What’s the market to which Canada would export cars? Or is the idea to simply gain in other industries and let the Canadian auto industry die out?

“But at the same time, Carney scrapped an electric vehicle sales mandate introduced by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2023,”

As you write, it appears kind of random. There’s an Aesop fable to the effect, “when you try to please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody.” Perhaps he is just trying to give himself more room to bargain, greater flexibility, in the renegotiations this year.

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