The National President for Unifor is calling for immediate countermeasures and investment protections from the Canadian government as the United States doubles steel and aluminum tariffs.
Lana Payne is urging the federal government to step up and act without delay to defend Canada's manufacturing sector.
U.S. President Donald Trump issued a proclamation Tuesday, doubling tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from all countries - including Canada - from 25 per cent to 50 per cent.
Canada remains the largest supplier of both steel and aluminum to the United States, and Payne says Canada is already seeing the consequences in lost jobs as well as economic instability.
Payne says there needs to be retaliatory measures in place.
"We are basically saying to the Canadian government 'look, there's a number of things you can do here, you need to push back hard'. We have asked for retaliatory tariffs on U.S. steel and aluminum to match the 50 per cent that we're seeing. But also looking at a number of other measures that can happen."
She says despite what Trump thinks, workers on both sides of the border will be impacted by this decision.
"It's really hard to imagine how he would think that American workers, given their dependency in the U.S. on so much of our aluminum and steel, how that will not have an impact on workers, and businesses in the U.S. because it will, I guarantee you it will."
Payne says the impacts are already being felt.
"We already know, and I know that some of our friends in the steel industry have been speaking out, and steel workers have been speaking out saying 'this is going to be dire'. Shipments have already been halted just because they cannot afford to pay a 50 per cent tariff. So, you're going to see that industry have to make decisions pretty quickly."
The U.S. imports approximately a quarter of its steel from Canadian suppliers, while half of all U.S. aluminum consumption originates from Canada.
Unifor warns that further threats by Trump to target aerospace, softwood lumber, energy, pharmaceuticals, microchips, copper, and Canada's film and entertainment sectors demonstrate the need for a broad-based industrial and trade defense strategy.
-with files from AM800's The Shift with Patty Handysides