The Current - Tariffs like a ‘circular firing squad,’ says Windsor mayor

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens explains how closely his city is linked to Detroit, its U.S. neighbour across the river — and why he thinks nobody wins in a trade war between the two countries.

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Ontario alone we're the number one trading partner, number one customer per se, for 17 states and number two to 11 others. We do $500 billion of trade on both sides of the border split equally down the center. That's Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaking with CNN over the weekend. One of the Ontario communities that sees much of the business he mentioned is Windsor. Drew Dilkens is the Mayor of Windsor, Ontario and head of the newly formed Border Mayor's Alliance. Mayor Dilkens, good morning. Good morning, Matt. You told the New York Times that these tariffs would be, in your words, life-altering and completely catastrophic for your community.

Why did you use that language? Because I sincerely believe that any sustained tariff at 25% for any period of time is going to have a dramatic impact on the auto sector and the ag sector in my region. And so this is going to cause big ripples in the fabric of my community. And that is why we formed the Bird of Mare's Alliance

because communities like ours are gonna be hit first and we're gonna be hit the hardest. How quickly will those ripples be felt? Well, no one's quite sure. It's expected within the matter of weeks, I would say, not months, but weeks, you will start seeing the auto manufacturers adjust their inventory as the price of vehicles start to rise. Depending who you believe the price

of a vehicle is going to go up between $3,000 and $7,500. And so even if it's $3,000 that's going to have a bit of a chilling effect on the consumer market. People are going to wait in the sidelines and say let's just see what happens here. Let's not spend that money right now. This may be short lived. And they're going to sit on the sidelines and say, let's just see what happens here. Let's not spend that money right now. This may be short lived. And they're going to sit on the sidelines, which will have manufacturers adjust their output, which means people will be going on layoff. And it could be a very, very painful time while things start adjusting. The executive chairwoman of the auto parts maker Linamar has said that auto production

could shut down in North America within a week. Does that time frame seem reasonable to you? I would certainly defer to Ms. Hassen-France's judgment. She certainly has her finger on the pulse of the auto industry and the parts sector. But when you hear a company like Linamar make a comment like that, I think we should all lift our head up and open our eyes real wide because it's a very telling piece of the story with those who have billions

of dollars invested, how they're seeing this particular decision by the president of the United States. And so what are you telling people in your city who are going to see if these terrorists come into place, their life altered? Yeah, listen, I think this is all about sticking together.

I believe in the Canada First approach. I believe in not eating our own here and you know and becoming very difficult between different levels of government We have to have one unified approach as a country We have to make sure and I believe the Prime Minister's approach with retaliatory tariffs is the appropriate one I believe the consumers approach to look at buying Canadian is also an appropriate one And I think what you see even the Border Mayors Alliance doing is reaching across the border to mayors on the US side to try and activate and amplify their voices for their communities who are going to also feel the pain and the impact

in a negative way, amplifying all of these voices in the chorus that get to the president of the United States to say this trade war is going to have casualties on all sides. What are the conversations that you're having with people on the other side of the bridge or the tunnel in Detroit? Um, are you speaking for example, with the mayor of Detroit?

Yeah. So we, we, we've been reaching across from, from coast to coast in the country. We have over 20 mayors and the border mayors alliance all the way from Surrey, BC out to, uh, out to all the way to New Brunswick, uh, with many stops in between. So we are reaching across the border and it's not just the mayor of Detroit, it's the mayor

of Dearborn, Sterling Heights, where there are many places in Michigan where there are cities with automotive factories and it's about amplifying their voices and making sure that they understand what the impact will be. I mean if you look at US media, just do a scan of US media, there's a small story but it's certainly not top of the fold headline like you see all across our Canadian media because we understand what the impact is going to be very, very acutely. It's almost a side story at this particular point in time and I tend to believe that folks

are just in disbelief, like this can't really be real and certainly is this really going to still happen tomorrow and how long will this actually last for because it makes no sense. You know Matt, on one of your sister shows on CBC I was listening to over the weekend and one of the guests described this, I thought very appropriately, he says what we basically set up with this tariff or what the president has set up is a circular firing squad and I thought that was a perfect statement uh, perfect statement to describe this situation where everyone's going to lose. No matter where you stand in that circle,

you're going to lose. Uh, and I, it's just hard to imagine an elected official wanting to do harm to those that have actually brought him into office. Although many people, I mean, I spent a lot of time in Dearborn before the election. There are many people there who voted for Donald Trump, who wanted the reshoring of the auto

industry, presumably they had a sense that this is what Donald Trump was going to do. Yeah, so let's talk about that. That's really interesting. And the reshoring of the auto industry, the repatriation of all sorts of manufacturing and the threat of using tariffs to accomplish that goal. The most senior well-recognized economists around the world will tell you this is a short-term issue that may have some minor benefits in the very short term, but long term is destined to lose because the value of the US dollar will go up, they will sell less to the rest of the world, and it will actually have an undermining impact. The tariffs will have an undermining impact

to what it is the president's trying to do. That there are other ways, if you wanna repatriate production back to your country, there are other ways to do that, but a wholesale tariff on your two largest trading partners or your three largest trading partners is not the way to go about it. I'm gonna be down in Windsor later on this week

to do the program from there. And one of the things that we're interested in is telling Canadians about the relationship between Windsor and Detroit in some ways as a microcosm for the relationship between Canada and the U S for people who aren't familiar with your part of this country, how close is, is that relationship? Well, I always used to use the example, uh, uh,

you know, during COVID when we had lots of conversations about the proximity and the border being closed, I say from my office to the border crossing, the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel is literally about 200 meters. And so from where I parked my car over to one of my favorite restaurants in Detroit with a Nexus card is nine minutes door to door. And so Detroit for us is just an extension of our backyard in the city of Windsor. That's where the football teams are and the concerts and the dining and the shopping, all of that exists really, really close to the border. And so everyone has built up their life really close to the border in this community because they have access to all the major amenities on the other side and it's just a good quality of life.

So is that relationship different now? Do you see somebody having built a fence through your backyard? Well, certainly it's an act of aggression by the President of the United States, but I certainly don't hold that against my American friends. Between the countries, we are each other's largest trading partner. There's no too close or friends. We share the world's longest undefended border, which is nothing but a series of fortified gates.

There's no fence along this world's longest undefended border. And so it's not the people of the United States, it's one person pushing an agenda that is misguided, that will not have the impact that he hopes it will have, and actually will have the opposite. It will undermine not just people in my country and in Mexico, but will undermine his own citizens

that voted him into office. And it'll be interesting to watch how fast he reacts once those folks start paying more for everything that they buy in the United States as well. Drew Dilkens, good to speak with you and looking forward to being in Windsor later this week. Thank you. Look forward to seeing you, Matt. Thank you.

Drew Dilkens is mayor of Windsor, Ontario, head of the border mayors alliance. And as I mentioned, the current will be down in Windsor later on this week, hopefully coming to you live from that city on Thursday.