The auto industry is not going to wait until 2020
They will have to react to events in order to survive
The americans will tool up south of the boarder to avoid the tariffs on canadian parts
They will not give that back
Simple.
If the US government puts tariffs on Canadian autos which causes manufacturers to pull out of Canada, we respond with huge tariffs against American made cars.
Example, Ford closes Ford Canada.
Fine, now every Ford coming into Canada gets hit with a 50 percent tariff.
There are still plenty of other car and truck options for the Canadian consumer. Just no more F150s.
Canada is THEE number 1 export market for American cars BY FAR. In fact, pretty much at all. How many F150s do you think the Japanese buy? Answer - 0. How many F150s do you think the Europeans buy? I will answer that too. None. How many F150s do you think the Mexicans Buy? Maybe a couple hundred.
Canada is really the ONLY export market for Ford, GM and Chrysler. No-one else in the world really wants to buy American cars. Canadians buy millions of them.
I really doubt that Ford GM and Chrysler want to give up that market. Especially when there is no real trade imbalance at all between Canada and the USA.
Killing the Canadian market for American cars at the least will only drive up car prices south of the boarder and potentially could bankrupt the US auto firms. They NEED the Canadian market.