U.S. President Donald Trump made good on his threat to hit Canada with massive tariffs, signing an executive order imposing them Saturday.
Trump’s major trade action is expected to take effect on Tuesday.
The tariff on Canada will be 25 per cent across the board, with the exception of energy, which will be hit with a 10 per cent tariff.
Unifor national president Lana Payne is a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Canada-U.S. Relations.
She told CTV's Power Play with Vassy Kapelos that these are not the actions of an ally.
"These tariffs will be devastating for Canadian workers and American workers, you know this." Payne said. "[Trump's] declared economic war on Canada and on Canadian workers, and it's going to be a very very difficult time ahead, but our country is not going to have any choice here but to respond in the toughest and strongest possible way."
Payne noted that there are around 120,000 of her members currently working in the automotive and aerospace sectors who could be impacted by these tariffs.
"There's a potential here given the integration of that sector that we could face the entire shutdown of the auto sector within a week or two," she said. "That's how serious this is. It's very very very serious right now, and a lot of American workers are going to be hurt by that too because our economy is and our sectors are."
According to a White House "fact sheet" Trump is imposing the tariffs to address a national "emergency situation," and "public health crisis"”
"The extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs, including deadly fentanyl, constitutes a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)," reads the Trump administration’s rationale.
Payne says in her opinion the tariffs are about raising revenues, and not the border or fentanyl.
She says the threats alone have already caused damage to Canada's economy.
"We had businesses that were on standstill, not investing," Payne said. "Basically planning expansions at their plants and saying 'okay we got to put this on hold'. That is the decisions that have already been made, so you can only imagine the kind of decisions that we'll be looking at when we get these tariffs on Tuesday."
Late Saturday night, in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs, Canada responded with 25 per cent tariffs on $155 billion worth of American goods.
-With files from CTV News' Power Play with Vassy Kapelos