Trump ‘chaos’ demands ‘wartime urgency’ — Windsor business leaders

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Windsor business leaders fear only when U.S. consumers start feeling sharp economic pain will Americans finally realize the harm inflicted on both sides of the border by Donald Trump’s trade tariffs.

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But in Windsor — an industrial border city with strong cross-border economic ties — that pain is already felt, with worries it may soon grow much worse.

In an interview with the Star this week, WFCU Credit Union president and CEO Eddie Francis said those he speaks with in the U.S. still just shrug off as mere bluster and deal-making their president’s threats of steep tariffs on Canadian and other foreign imports.

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Asked why U.S. leaders, for example in Michigan — for whom Ontario is their biggest trading partner — haven’t been more publicly outspoken against Trump actions sure to hurt their own communities, Francis said he’s asked himself the same question.

“They still maintain — which is surprising to me — that it isn’t going to happen. It’s important for people to wake up. This isn’t negotiating, this is real-people impact.”

Tuesday was just another high-stakes rollercoaster day of on-again, off-again tariff and counter-tariff ultimatums, with yet another looming deadline.

“It’s mass chaos,” said Laval International president and CEO Jonathon Azzopardi. “The real crappy part is we don’t know where to turn for answers.”

The head of one of the hundreds of tool, die and mould manufacturing companies based in the Windsor area told the Star he’d spent much of that day on the phone with lawyers, accountants and brokers trying to figure out what was happening so his business could try to plan and budget. Nobody knew.

“It is freaking me out. The shame is we have a system that ran so smoothly for so many years, and now it’s in such chaos and disarray,” said Azzopardi.

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He and others argue it’s just not true what Trump and his administration have been repeating on an almost daily basis, that Canada is “ripping off” Americans. Azzopardi said the single-biggest cost at his 48-year-old company, with factories in Windsor and Tecumseh, is not labour but steel, and all four million pounds of it purchased annually is sourced from the U.S.

It’s not that it’s cheaper than Canadian steel, he said, it’s just of a size and grade his clients — mostly American — need from Laval for their products. On a factory visit on Tuesday, he points to a massive steel mould being produced for one of his American clients to press and create bathtubs. As with the auto sector — Laval also produces parts for pretty much every U.S. vehicle manufacturer — that bathtub mould will crisscross the border about five times before it’s finished, generating American jobs and economic investment along the way.

A minute past midnight Wednesday, Trump slapped a 25-per-cent tariff on every steel product each time it crosses the border. Canada is responding with its own counter-tariffs.

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“All this tough talk is fine, it’s part of the equation, but the U.S. needs us, and Canada needs the U.S. There is only one outcome here — realigning with our most important trading partner,” said Azzopardi.

Francis said the current turmoil between closest neighbours and allies has “brought back a lot of memories” from when he was Windsor’s mayor during the Great Recession of 2008. A global economic downturn triggered by a housing bubble bust in the U.S. saw Windsor’s economy hit the fastest and hardest in Canada. Recovery took years.

Francis, who jetted around the world in pursuit of any and all investment opportunities, said he made many trips to Washington, D.C., in part to help drum up support for a new Windsor-Detroit trade crossing, the eventual Gordie Howe International Bridge. He sees parallels today to what he experienced then in the American corridors of power — “the lack of awareness of the integration of our two economies.

“Countries don’t compete against countries — it’s trading blocs vs. trading blocs, that’s the only way we compete.”

It’s the ‘Am-Can Fortress’ message Ontario Premier Doug Ford keeps referring to as he reminds U.S. political leaders that his province is the largest trading partner for 17 U.S. states and the second-largest to 11 others.

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Francis, who spent more than a decade as Windsor’s mayor, now heads one of Canada’s largest credit unions, with branches in 22 Ontario communities and $5.8 billion in assets. Canadians, he said, must “plan for the worst and hope for the best … people have to start acting like this isn’t just an awful headache we’ll get over soon.

“We have to approach this with wartime urgency.”

Asked what that means, Francis said governments should cut “red tape” when it comes to new development and domestic construction; ease taxation on jobs-generating investment; and reduce inter-provincial trade barriers.

Both Francis and Azzopardi, given their prominent positions within the local business community, know the chaos sown by Trump is already having a negative psychological impact, but there’s also concern over businesses pausing new investment and expansion. Azzopardi said he’s seen a bit of “panic.”

Francis said it’s the “real-life impact on people” and family discussions around the kitchen tables on both sides of the border that will eventually encourage political leaders to respond to the economic suffering triggered by the Trump tariffs.

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But that might not be in the immediate future. Windsor West MP Brian Masse and Windsor-Tecumseh MP Irek Kusmierczyk joined a Canadian delegation to Washington, D.C., last week, meeting with U.S. counterparts.

“They couldn’t defend it,” Kusmierczyk told the Star of the Trump tariffs. “They understand it’s a tax on the American people. They understand the damage that it will have on the economies. But again, there’s that deference, a hesitancy to stand up.”

Azzopardi told the Star his U.S. clients also oppose the tariffs and recognize their own vulnerability, but “nobody will speak out on that side — nobody wants to be a (Trump administration) target.”

The Windsor-Essex economy is particularly exposed when it comes to a U.S.-Canada trade war, with more than double the proportion of manufacturing jobs (21.9 per cent) compared to the 9.9 per cent in the Canadian workforce as a whole.

A recent Canadian Chamber of Commerce report put Windsor at No. 3 on a list of ‘most tariff-vulnerable cities in Canada.’

dschmidt@postmedia.com

twitter.com/schmidtcity

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