Canada

I don't agree with the tariffs. Canada does have an auto industry, but as far as Electric Vehicles or batteries are concerned, there's not much to protect. We don't have a proper competitive product for EVs, and Canada doesn't have the infrastructure investments needed to make EVs competitive with ICE vehicles. We're a smaller market with a huge hinterland and hard winters, and that poses some natural challenges for EVs.

Also, we're saddled with the Americans, and even they don't appear to be pursuing EVs or battery technologies at the highest levels with maximum effort. What are these tariffs for, exactly?

Even if Chinese companies were allowed to sell to the Canadian markets, they'd likely be shipped in as final products, and we'd hope they're not watered down.

Canada's relationship with the US is not good at the moment, and the Americans are emphasizing onshoring and US manufacturing. Canada will have to balance what it wants with these real considerations. We may have the right value proposition for local manufacture, but that depends on how far out we look into the horizon.

So with all of this in mind, the Vauxhall Advance wants to ask Canola farmers to willingly offer their business as sacrifice to some tariffs that don't even look like they're accomplishing much? If anything, China's negotiations amount to a gesture of please reconsider while we offset your product with other agricultural products from the Belt and Road initiative.

I think that's a difficult message for the canola farmers to swallow. Everyone sees what happened to the American soy farmers. They're done. Even after negotiations between the US and China led to a truce, the resulting supply glut and the rise of new competitors in South America will leave a lasting impression.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-soybean-glut-could-defeat-us-export-hopes-after-trade-thaw-2025-11-12/