Poilievre calls for common sense tariffs on made-in-china EVs, steel, aluminum, critical minerals and other products to bring home jobs to Canada.

August 12, 2024

Ottawa, ON – The Hon. Pierre Poilievre, Leader of Canada’s Common Sense Conservatives and the Official Opposition, is announcing a plan to bring home Canadian jobs by matching American tariffs on Chinese-produced electric vehicles (EVs) and EV components. The plan means tariffs on steel, aluminum, critical minerals and other key imports, and an end to rebates for made-in-China EVs. 

The Problem: 

After nine years of Justin Trudeau and the NDP, life costs more, work doesn’t pay, and housing costs have more than doubled and have risen faster than any other G7 country. Crime, chaos, drugs and disorder overtake our once-safe streets. He has doubled our debt, imposed massive, promise-breaking tax increases, and blocked Canadian oil, gas and mining to allow dirty foreign dictatorships, like China, Russia, Iran and Venezuela, to gain more market control. Trudeau says he admires China’s basic communist dictatorship, and he continues to recognize the illegal Maduro dictatorship as the government in Venezuela even after the democratic opposition won the election.  

In 2014, Canada’s middle class was wealthier than the United States’ middle class, but now, the OECD predicts that Canada will be the worst-performing advanced economy over the next decade and for the next 30 years after that. 

No wonder Canada’s GDP per person has shrunk more than any other country in the G7 while most countries have grown. The OECD says Canada will have the worst growth out of its nearly 40 countries this decade and in the next three decades. His plan to quadruple carbon tax hikes will put hundreds of thousands of Canadians out of a job; indeed, his government’s own data shows that the tax will reduce GDP by $25 billion a year. 

And now, Trudeau is putting hundreds of thousands of steel, aluminum, mining and auto manufacturing jobs at risk by allowing Beijing to flood our markets with artificially cheap Chinese-produced electric vehicles and other products, while our biggest trading partner has applied tariffs to keep jobs in the US. 

The Communist Party in Beijing (CCP) exploits their weak labour and environmental standards to produce artificially cheap steel, aluminum, and EVs that create far more pollution. They have also stolen technology from Western countries, limited global access to critical mineral supply chains and have massively subsidized their steel, aluminum, and EV industries. They’re doing this with the goal of crushing the steel, aluminum, mining and auto manufacturing industries in countries like Canada, along with the hundreds of thousands of workers that depend on them. 

Justin Trudeau has failed to protect Canadian steel, aluminum, mining and auto workers, even allowing the tens of billions of dollars of investments he’s made into EV battery plants to be spent on foreign replacement workers instead of jobs for Canadian workers. He allowed this to happen even as unemployment increased throughout the summer. 

Trudeau has refused to follow in the United States’ footsteps by matching their tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles. The United States first introduced tariffs to counteract this six years ago, and as a result, made-in-China EVs have largely been kept off American roads. Meanwhile, Trudeau did basically nothing, and Canadian workers are paying the price. Worse still, Liberals are even offering rebates for Chinese EVs. This means that Canada is literally subsidizing the CCP's attempt to destroy Canada’s auto industry. 

He taxes Canadian-made cars and fuel and subsidizes Chinese-made cars. 

We used to beat the Americans when it came to investment -- more dollars were flowing into Canada from the US than the other way around. But ever since Trudeau took power, more and more of our money has left our country for the USA, with the gap now totalling $460 billion. 

The Solution: 

Canadian workers are the best in the world and deserve to earn powerful paycheques that will protect them against Trudeau’s inflationary taxes and spending. Rather than allowing authoritarian governments overseas to benefit from low labour standards and dirty energy, we must bring home more made-in-Canada products built by well-paid workers, using clean Canadian-produced energy. 

Canadian workers deserve powerful paycheques and safe jobs. That’s why Common Sense Conservatives have put forward a plan to match our closest trading partner and:  

  1. Introduce a 100% tariff on made-in-China EVs entering Canada.  
  2. Introduce a 50% tariff on semiconductors and solar cells.
  3. Introduce a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum products, graphite, other critical minerals, EV batteries, battery parts, permanent magnets and ship-to-shore cranes. 
  4. Ensure there are no more rebates for made-in-China EVs. 

 “A Common Sense Conservative Government will also repeal C-69 to bring home more mining and energy projects and pass a Bring It Home Tax Cut, lowering taxes on work, investment and making stuff in Canada, so businesses bring home production and workers bring home more of their paycheques. Common Sense Conservatives will bring home powerful paycheques for our people. And we will have a Prime Minister who puts Canada’s workers first: our people, on our soil, under our flag. 

That is what it means to bring it home.”