Unifor president says Trump’s CUSMA comments are attempts to get concessions, urges Canada to ‘be very firm’
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LISTEN | Union president says ‘there’s never been as much at stake’ in CUSMA talks:
As It Happens6:28Union president says ‘there’s never been as much at stake’ in CUSMA talks, urges Canada’s negotiators to use leverage
U.S. President Donald Trump says he’s not in favour of renewing CUSMA, the three-way trade agreement between Canada, Mexico and the U.S.
“I would rather leave it unsigned. I’d rather have it terminated,” he told reporters after the G7 summit in France last week. While Trump mused about the deal “expiring immediately,” he also suggested he “may sign” the trilateral agreement.
CUSMA covers around $2.7 trillion a year in trade between the three countries.
Each of the three countries have until July 1 to declare whether they want to extend CUSMA beyond its 2036 expiry date. Mexico and Canada favour an extension but the U.S. hasn’t formally taken a position.
Lana Payne is the national president of Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union, representing over 320,000 members working in major sectors of the economy like forestry and the auto industry.
On Monday, Unifor started labour negotiations with the Big Three automakers, General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis. Payne says there’s more at stake for workers than ever.
Payne says Trump’s comments are the latest example of the global economic uncertainty he’s caused since he returned to the White House. She says the remarks are likely a negotiating tactic meant to extract more concessions, but she urges Canada’s trade team to remain firm and use its leverage to fight for Canadian jobs.
Payne spoke to As It Happens host Nil Köksal, about the uncertainty surrounding the trade negotiations.
Payne said the stakes have never been higher for workers. (Dax Melmer/CBC News)
The U.S. president has been clear about how he feels about this trade agreement. Do you take what he says seriously?
The reality is he says one thing one week and something different the next and that’s been part of the chaos and uncertainty. Workers [depend] on having a stable trading relationship with the United States; that includes a lot of the people that I represent in the auto sector, in the forestry sector and the aluminum sector. The reality is, I believe the United States needs this trade agreement just as Canada does. I think what we’re seeing in the United States right now is the cake is starting to bake. They’ve had a number of issues in their manufacturing sector and certainly companies have been struggling somewhat, particularly those who are paying very large tariff bills to the U.S. administration.
The chaos and the uncertainty may be a little bit less than before but uncertainty still remains, so how do you then go into these talks when there is so much uncertainty?
The CUSMA negotiations, that’s one thing and I’ve been pretty clear from the beginning, I believe Canada has leverage. I believe we can be propositional around how we can improve, how we build vehicles together and when it comes to our own negotiations with the Detroit three, which start on Monday. We’re going to the table with Ford and the reality is perhaps there’s never been as much at stake as we’re facing right now because of the tariffs and the global uncertainty and instability we see. Because of the growth and capacity of China, all of these things have an impact on the auto industry and what has an impact on the industry has an impact on negotiations. But the reality for us is we can also use this moment at a negotiating table to press for the things that we need. We’ve been very clear this isn’t about concessionary bargaining; this is about securing good wages, benefits, improvements and pensions for our members. It’s also about job security and how we maintain the footprint we have in Canada.
In January, when Canada made the EV deal with China, you called it, “playing with fire.” You’ve likely heard the hot mic moment between Prime Minister Mark Carney and the U.S. president when the prime minister seemed to want to reassure Donald Trump that only a small number of Chinese EVs would be coming into Canada. What did you take away from that?
That our prime minister understands that this is an issue and that he felt the need to have a discussion with the president about it. We’ve said from the beginning, not just in January, our union understood that if there’s one thing in the United States that Republicans and Democrats agree on, that’s China and their manufacturing capacity and how that plays into the U.S. trying to protect its own manufacturing capacity. It’s a very tricky time. We knew that this deal that we were striking with China would end up coming back as a discussion point potentially in the CUSMA renewal. I don’t think anyone should be surprised by that and clearly our Prime Minister has had that conversation now with the president to try and offer him assurances.
Minister says Carney’s Chinese EV comments to Trump were ‘nothing new’
Asked about Prime Minister Mark Carney’s conversation about Chinese EVs with U.S. President Trump during the G7 summit, Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc said ‘this shouldn’t surprise anybody that the prime minister took this opportunity to discuss what is a well-known circumstance for a number of months.’ Carney’s comments were caught in a hot mic moment.
Did that moment, what you heard and the way they seem to be interacting, is that reassuring for you as we head into these talks?
I think that there are things that the president says, and then I think there are things that his trade ambassador has been trying to achieve. They’ve been very vocal about the kind of irritants they see and trying to align tariffs and other policies. So, we’re going to have to work our way through this at the CUSMA table and there are a number of challenges there already. I don’t think this makes it any easier for us but the reality is it’s there now, so we’re going to have to work through it.
We’re into a review process and in somewhat of a renegotiation process, that means we have a president who’s bargaining hard. A lot of what he says is to posture for that and see whatever he can do to get more concessions out of Canada, which is why we have to hold the line. We have to be very firm, we have to use the leverage and strength that we have and protect these industries in Canada, the auto industry, the forestry industry and all others.
