INGERSOLL – For a Wednesday morning, Costa Kourtesis’s restaurant on Bell Street, Louie’s, is quieter than usual.
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Normally a few workers at the nearby Cami Assembly auto plant would be having breakfast before the start of their shift. They didn’t arrive. And Kourtesis already knows the afternoon rush won’t come, either.
The 1,300-worker Cami electric-vehicle assembly plant, owned by GM Canada, was closed Wednesday as part of a scheduled two-week shutdown. But U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs could permanently shutter Cami and other Canadian auto factories, devastating Southwestern Ontario towns like Ingersoll that are built on them.
“I’m very, very concerned,” Kourtesis said of the fallout in his community of 11,000, located along Hwy. 401 east of London. “I still can’t believe one person can have the power to cause so much damage. . . . But it’s not only (President Donald) Trump. It’s the whole country.
“If we say Trump is stupid, that he’s an idiot, what about the millions of Americans who voted for him? What about congress?”
Trump on Tuesday imposed tariffs of 25 per cent on all Canada- and Mexico-made products being imported into the United States. In response, Canada slapped equal tariffs on $30 billion of U.S. goods entering Canada, with a threat of more later this month.
The moves sent shockwaves across financial markets and had auto-sector analysts bracing for the worst. One expert previously told The Free Press auto and auto-parts plants could shut down within a week of U.S. tariffs being imposed.
Then on Wednesday – just 24 hours later – Trump announced a one-month reprieve on automobiles made in Canada and Mexico.
In Ingersoll, the uncertainty could only be compared to the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, said the town’s mayor.
“This is something that’s never been dealt with,” said Brian Petrie, who fears a “significant” local toll if and when Trump’s tariffs are imposed. “Ingersoll is an industry town, and we ship a lot of products to the U.S., so there’s a lot of people’s jobs at stake and futures at stake and prosperity at stake.”
Cami is the biggest employer in town and thousands of spinoff jobs across the region are attached to its future. There are, of course, other local businesses shipping products to the U.S. and facing the tariff toll, too.
In total, Ingersoll-based companies in 2022 exported about $2.1 billion worth of goods. $1.4 billion of that came from auto, food processing, defense, packaging and other advanced manufacturing, according to Lightcast, a labour market analytics company.
That adds up to a mix of anger, frustration and worry in this quiet community.
“There’s a lot of anxiety and concern because no one’s sure what’s going to happen and what Trump’s going to do next,” Mike Van Boekel, the union chair at Cami, said before the one-month reprieve. “But I do like seeing the government fight back. If it were me, I would close the borders to all American-made vehicles immediately and not allow them into Canada.”
Tom Weston is an Ingersoll native who works in plastic injection moulding, with some products going to the U.S. He expressed anger over Trump’s tariffs and concern over his community’s future. “I’m sure it’s going to affect us all. It’s definitely not a good time.”
For Kourtesis, his restaurant could likely survive a heavy hit to the local economy. But it would certainly mean having to lay off some of his more than 35 employees, he said.
“If we have layoffs from Cami or some of the other companies here, it’s going to hit us too eventually,” he said.