Ford CEO: 'We can't walk away' from 'critical' partners
America-alone strategy will wreck industry, driving up car prices and hurting sales
Standing beside Ford CEO Jim Farley at the River Rouge Complex in Dearborn, President Trump responded to an avalanche of questions with shocking statements that revealed his latest views about an auto industry battered by new tariff policies and facing brutal competition from Chinese competitors — while disclosing he has zero commitment to renewing a fair trade deal between the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
“It expires very shortly. We could have it or not. It wouldn’t matter to me,” Trump said on Tuesday, Jan. 13. “I don’t really care about it. (There’s) no real advantage to us. It’s irrelevant to me. Canada would love it. Canada wants it. They need it. Because we don’t need Canada product. That’s the thing … We used to build cars in Canada, now Canadians are moving here to build cars. Same thing with Mexico.”
There is no evidence that Canada or Mexico are moving plants to the U.S.
Until now, the three nations have had trade agreements that helped North America compete — and succeed — as a team.
Farley, in an exclusive interview with Shifting Gears at the 2026 Detroit Auto Show at Huntington Place on Jan. 16, said, “Canada has always been really important for Ford. We build most of our powertrains there. We have a new factory going up in Oakville, — we’re transforming a factory.”
He continued, “We set up the whole auto industry as an integrated supply chain and manufacturing in all three countries. We can’t walk away from that … It is critical for our industry and for all of us who live here. People may not have paid attention to the trade agreement last time but that’s about to change this spring.”
‘Americans really have forgotten’
Ford is proud of having been the first automaker to reach labor contract deals during the last round of negotiations with the UAW and Unifor, unions that represent autoworkers in the U.S. and Canada.
Ford has been in Canada for more than a century, since Theodore Roosevelt was in the Oval Office. These days, Ford isn’t the only automaker that values the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
“I think a lot of Americans really have forgotten about how important that trade deal is to the auto industry,” Farley said. “It’s very critical for Canada and Mexico and the U.S.”
Trump’s dismissive remarks triggered headlines across Canada from media outlets including Global News and CTV News. In a 9:46 minute exchange captured at the factory by LiveNOW from FOX!, Trump said, “I don’t know much about cars but I know how to get people working.”
Until now, Michigan and Ontario have established an international reputation as a dynamic collaborative region — with five automakers and more than 700 global suppliers.
In the latest turn of events, Trump has displayed “a complete disregard for the realities of modern manufacturing,” said analyst Sam Abuelsamid, vice president of market research at Telemetry Agency, who spent more than two decades as a mechanical engineer in the auto industry.
“Policies making the U.S. auto industry increasingly isolated from the rest of the world, not just trade policies but other policies, basically is making everyone else hate us and not buy U.S.-made products,” Abuelsamid told me.
‘Shredding’ relationship with Canada
Few in the industry understand what’s they’re witnessing.
During President Trump’s last term, he tweeted that (USMCA) was the “best and most important trade deal ever made by the USA. Good for everybody — Farmers, Manufacturers, Energy, Unions.”
Trump has shifted dramatically.
“I don’t even think about USMCA. You know, I want to see Canada and Mexico do well but, the problem is, we don’t need their product. We don’t need cars made in Canada. We don't need cars made in Mexico.”
But U.S. companies build across the border to afford lower-profit vehicles — such as the Chevy Equinox, Chevy Silverado 1500 pickup, Ford Bronco Sport, and Maverick little pickup, Ram 1500 pickup and Jeep Compass. Meanwhile, the Chevrolet Silverado, Chrysler Pacifica and Dodge Charger Daytona are built in Canada.
But vehicles with lower profit margins — including the Jeep Compass, Chevrolet Equinox and Ford Bronco Sport and Maverick — are built in Mexico to make them more affordable for American consumers, Abuelsamid noted. Shifting those to U.S. plants will likely make products more expensive.
“While the Canadian market is considerably smaller than the U.S. market, it’s still a significant market. We sell a lot of U.S.-built vehicles in Canada and bring a lot of Canadian-built vehicles and parts to the U.S.,” Abuelsamid said. “Shredding that relationship would be detrimental to both countries and to the companies involved.”
During the past 12 months, as friendship between the U.S., Canada and Mexico has weakened. Travelers have begun avoiding the U.S.
“What we’ll likely see if this trade deal goes away, and the trade relationships between countries continues to deteriorate, Canadians will not buy U.S.-built vehicles anymore. They’ll look to China and Korea.”
Canada’s strategic alliance with China, not U.S.
Following Trump’s visit to Ford Motor Co., Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced an electric vehicle trade deal with China that captured the attention of the world. Carney tweeted on Jan. 16 that Canada was forging a new strategic partnership. Carney tweeted later that day that Canada was "recalibrating" its relationship with China, "strategically, pragmatically, and decisively."
The BBC told viewers in the United Kingdom that the development is a “win for Carney, the first Canadian leader to visit China in nearly a decade. He has been trying to diversify Canadian trade away from the US, his country’s biggest trading partner, following the uncertainty caused by Trump’s on-again-off-again tariffs.”
Analysts expect to see the first Chinese automaker building in Canada within 12 months or sooner.
“We’re going to start seeing bunch of Chinese electric vehicles brought into Canada — for $25,000 with 300 miles of range. And they’re really nice cars. It’s an existential threat to the U.S. auto industry,” Abuelsamid said. “Americans will start asking, ‘How come Canada is the only one getting those cars?’”
This doesn’t include the recent campaign to pressure allies involving Greenland.
The Chinese may be eyeing factories in Canada already. Stellantis has an unused plant in Brampton, Ontario, once was slated to build the Jeep Compass before U.S. tariffs redirected that project to Illinois, Abuelsamid noted. General Motors has a plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada, but that’s idled now. GM moved jobs building the Silverado pickup from a plant in Oshawa, Windsor, to Fort Wayne, Indiana.
‘I was right on tariffs’
"Everybody said that the cars are dead in the United States,” Trump said at the Ford factory this month. “If you go back four years ago, into the middle of the Biden Administration, everybody was closing up their plants. Now we have more plants being built in our country than at any time in history. Nobody has ever seen anything like it … Everybody now admits that I was right on tariffs.”
No auto factories closed during the Biden Administration. Plants were paused because parts shortages from the COVID-19 pandemic prevented cars from being built — not from being sold. But Detroit automakers have cited the new tariff policies when reporting billions in losses during 2025.
Since 2021, carmakers have been extremely profitable, Abuelsamid said. "Part of the reason for that, unfortunately for consumers, was a shortage of chips and then other supply chain challenges. Automakers had to prioritize, so they build the most profitable products and lower-margin vehicles were put on hold.”
Now automakers are desperately working to change plans to navigate new federal policies, including a reduced commitment to electric vehicles that help reduce emissions.
Abuelsamid recently wrote a column titled, “The U.S. auto industry is facing extinction.”
National security risk
Trump articulates a vision of the world that’s steeped in hope for America rather than reality, said Marick Masters, professor emeritus at the Mike Ilitch School of Business at Wayne State University in Detroit.
“Trump is emphasizing an idyllic view of the world that he has, where the United States has hegemony over the Western Hemisphere and is not dependent on partners to sustain its industries which are vital to national security. His tariff policy is consistent with that vision,” Masters said.
“The success of his tariff policy in making the auto industry in North America purely U.S.-based is an open question, as is the case who will be the dominant force in the next 10 years in the North American auto industry. Will it be China or will it be the U.S. I would say, right now, we lag considerably behind the Chinese in trying to get a foothold on the future of the global auto industry. We are really followers rather than leaders.”
Market share among Detroit Three automakers continues to shrink as the auto industry welcomes new global players, he said. “What they’re struggling over is managing decline. The future of the auto market is going to be global.”
Longtime industry observers wonder if the people of Michigan and families throughout the U.S. realize that the millions of jobs tied directly and indirectly to the auto industry through research and development, sales, parts, service, manufacturing.
At issue, which too few people understand, is the fact that the entire structure of the automotive supply chain and value chain has been built up over the last seven decades based on the rules of North American trade policies — and an integrated supply chain in all three countries supplying all three countries.
“Even for vehicles that have final assembly in the U.S., pretty much every single vehicle sold is subject to tariffs because of parts going back and forth — raw materials, components subsystems,” Abuelsamid said. “One of my neighbors happens to be an engineer for an automaker — and he told me an example of a wiring harness. Parts come from a supplier in Japan, go to another supplier in Mexico to get assembled, then that gets shipped to Texas for assembly with the side airbag module, then it goes back to a supplier back in Mexico to put it into the seat — and it goes back to Texas, into the vehicle.”
‘This isn’t 1950’
The potentially devastating impact of breaking up the automotive trinity that exists today cannot be can’t be overstated, said Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting for AutoForecast Solutions of Chester Springs, Pennsylvania.
“North America is one single machine in the automotive industry,” he said. “All three countries work together to compete with larger groups, like the EU (European Union) and China. Each individual country cannot do that alone. If the US is forced to compete on the world stage all by itself, it can’t. Pricing and parts of vehicles would go out so much that it would take them out of a competitive range on a global scale.”
Fiorani said, “This isn’t 1950 and the US does not dominate the world stage in the automotive industry. Right now, Canada and Mexico compete for the best pricing and best quality of parts and contribute to each North American vehicle being as competitive as it can be on a world stage. It’s outdated to think the U.S. alone can compete with a united EU and a massive China.”
China is poised to exploit a U.S. isolation strategy, he warned.
“If the US shuts out Canada and Mexico, other countries will fill that void and the US will become even less relevant on a world stage,” Fiorani said. “The companies right now rely on production in Mexico and production in Canada for all kinds of components. If you start competing against Canada and Mexico, the Chinese will step in and take over where the Americans have decided to not compete.”
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I appreciate your reporting. On a personal level this whole business brings strong emotions. I saw what NAFTA did to USA factories firsthand. Colleagues who I worked alongside for years losing their jobs. Then repeatedly experiencing this over again with different factories has left a mark. The 2008 financial crisis began a new round of troubles. The level of complexity cannot be understated. Keep up the good work.
Thank you for your continuing commitment to providing vitally needed information to the public realm. You teach me things I didn’t know, and should, every single time.