Unifor President Lana Payne responded to US President Donald Trump’s announcement of 25 percent tariffs on auto imports Wednesday by doubling down on the promotion of Canadian nationalism and lauding Liberal Prime Minister and former central banker Mark Carney as an ally in the fight to defend workers’ jobs.

Unifor is the largest private-sector union in Canada, with approximately 320,000 members, including over 35,000 employed in the auto sector who will be directly impacted by expected slowdowns and layoffs as a result of the tariffs, which are set to go into effect on April 2.

Speaking after a meeting to discuss the trade war with Carney in Kitchener, Ontario, Payne declared of Trump’s auto tariff, “This is a tariff on Canadian jobs. Make no mistake about it. It is an attack on Canadian auto workers, it is an attack on our industry, it is an attack on our economy. He has one goal in mind: to steal our jobs, to shift production to the United States. But I will tell you, not on our watch. We are going to defend every single auto job in this country with everything we have.”

There could hardly be a more open admission of Unifor’s close corporatist partnership with the auto bosses and government ministers against the workers. Payne’s blather about “our industry” and “our economy” under conditions where multi-billion-dollar global corporations like Ford and Stellantis dominate the auto sector, squeezing the last drop of profits out of overworked autoworkers, many of whom have been forced to rely on food banks during periods of down time imposed arbitrarily by the bosses due to changes in “market conditions,” makes clear who butters her bread.

Autoworkers know from bitter experience over the past four decades that the Unifor bureaucracy has no interest in defending their jobs or working conditions, but merely the ability of the automakers to turn a profit in Canada and the union bureaucracy to collect dues and expand their incestuous relationship with corporate executives and the state. Workers in the US and Mexico, who face similar threats to their Canadian colleagues amid the escalating trade war, did not even get a mention from Payne.

Trump’s announcement has roiled the global auto industry, given the fact that the supply chains for auto production are globally integrated, with parts crossing national borders multiple times before final assembly in any one country. It is expected that the tariffs—which will add between $5,000 and $15,000 to the cost of an imported vehicle—will result in the shutdown of the Canadian auto industry in a matter of weeks.

Approximately 80 percent of vehicles built in the country end up being exported to the US. Autos are Canada’s second-largest export by value, accounting for $51 billion in 2023, making it a critical sector for the national economy. More than 125,000 workers are employed in assembly or parts plants and another 380,000 work in distribution, sales and services, meaning that any hit to the industry will be far-reaching.

Speaking alongside Payne, Carney announced Wednesday plans to speak to Trump and stated that mechanisms were in place to respond with retaliatory tariffs even with a caretaker cabinet during the ongoing election campaign. Earlier in the morning, Carney spoke at the US-Canada border in Windsor, Ontario, with Unifor bureaucrats assembled behind him to announce a $2 billion “strategic response fund” to prop up the industry in the face of the tariffs and to encourage the development of an autarkic “all-in-Canada” supply chain for auto production.

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In the face of the devastating impact on jobs from the escalating trade war—with further tariffs expected to be announced on April 2, a day Trump has promised will be “Liberation Day” for America—Unifor is not advancing a strategy for working class action or cross-border unity with American and Mexican workers, who will also face the prospect of losing their jobs and livelihoods. Rather, it is lining up behind the ruling class and Canadian imperialism in an effort to rally workers around the national hearth.

As part of this, Payne has taken up a position as a vocal member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Canada-US Relations, where she has rubbed shoulders with Prime Ministers Justin Trudeau and now Carney, along with leading representatives of big business, including the auto industry.

In line with the demands of the ruling class, Unifor has outlined a program to “protect Canadian jobs” by building up the military-industrial complex, including supporting the drive to increase defence spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and developing closer defence partnerships with the European Union.

What is left unsaid is that any such increase in military spending will come directly at the expense of social programs on which millions of workers and their families rely and pave the way for workers to serve as cannon fodder for the global interests of Canadian imperialism. The Business Council of Canada, the mouthpiece for the country’s largest companies, has already declared this to be inadequate and is demanding that military spending be quickly ramped up to 3 percent of GDP.

Unifor’s nationalist program also calls for the government to impose—in addition to tariffs—stiff penalties on companies that move production from Canada to the US and to enforce a ban on their products from entering the country. Other proposals include a ban or restrictions on foreign ownership of critical minerals and an increase in cross-country oil shipments by rail rather than pipelines.

Payne and Unifor’s pro-war, pro-capitalist Canadian nationalist course mirrors the response of the UAW and its president, Shawn Fain, to Trump’s tariffs in the United States. Touted by pseudo-left cheerleaders for the union apparatus like Jacobin magazine as a militant union leader who fights for working people, Fain has led the UAW in championing the fascist-minded president’s tariffs as a boon for American workers. The UAW’s statement proclaimed in its headline, “In a Victory for Autoworkers, Auto Tariffs Mark the Beginning of the End of NAFTA and the ‘Free Trade’ Disaster,” before going on to assert in the manner of Trump that the tariffs would bring back “thousands of good-paying union jobs.”

Tariffs, whether imposed by Trump or in retaliation by the Canadian bourgeoisie, offer nothing but layoffs and deepening social misery for the working class. Moreover, history proves that trade war and tariffs are the prelude to a shooting war. This was the case in the 1930s, when the major powers responded to the Great Depression with tit-for-tat tariffs and the world economy collapsed into competing trade blocs, setting the stage for World War II.

The same dangers are arising once again. Fain has taken to wearing T-shirts with a logo of the World War II-era B-24 bomber and the slogan “Arsenal of democracy.” This is a reference to the fraudulent claims of the leaders of American imperialism that they fought the Second World War for “democracy,” while at home the unions ensured labour peace by helping impose a ban on strikes. The UAW and Unifor would act the same way during a third world war.

While Payne has insisted that Unifor does not endorse any party in the upcoming April 28 election, it is clear that the union apparatus is lining up with the former central banker Carney and his big-business Liberals against Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives.

Unifor and its Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) predecessor spearheaded a campaign of “strategic voting” over the past 30 years, presenting the Liberals as a “progressive” ally in federal and provincial elections to stop the right-wing Tories. This course has been central to the bureaucracy’s role in suppressing the class struggle through the maintenance of an alliance with the Liberals and social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP)—an alliance that has overseen a drastic shift to the right and an embrace of Tory policies throughout the political establishment.

Forty years ago, in 1985, the CAW split from the United Auto Workers (UAW), claiming that Canadian autoworkers could make better deals with the Big Three—GM, Ford and Chrysler—on their own. The devastating consequences of this nationalist strategy can be seen on both sides of the border, with workers being whipsawed against each other for jobs in a race to the bottom, plants shuttered and lives destroyed.

Far from saving the auto industry in Canada, under the CAW and now Unifor, autoworkers’ employment has seen a significant decline and wages have fallen far behind inflation. The few remaining assembly plants, concentrated in southern Ontario, are on life support, with workers missing out on entire years of work due to eliminated shifts, extended downtime and retooling. Billions of dollars in government subsidies for electric vehicles have done little for workers, while filling corporate coffers and padding profits. During the last round of talks at the Big Three in 2023, which could have been fought out together, Unifor conspired with the UAW to keep autoworkers separate from each other despite simultaneous contract expirations.

In the face of the building trade war and to protect their jobs, workers in Canada require a new strategy—one that unites workers across North America and is developed independently of the trade union apparatus and the capitalist parties. Workers must reject appeals to nationalism that aim to divide them from their brothers and sisters internationally, many of whom are exploited in the same industries and by the same transnational corporations.

The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) calls for workers to build rank-and-file committees in every workplace, allowing for the development of an independent struggle against the attack on the working class and the establishment of a fighting unity with workers in the US, Mexico and beyond.