Stellantis’s decision to scrap its plans for its Brampton, Ont. manufacturing plant is raising questions about whether U.S. President Donald Trump is succeeding in his goal to diminish Canada’s auto sector—and whether Canada has gone far enough to protect its third-biggest export.

The global auto giant, which is Chrysler’s parent company, said this week it would spend US$13 billion to make more of its vehicles in the U.S., including a US$600 million remodel of an Illinois plant to make the Jeep Cherokee and Compass in the U.S. instead of Mexico and Canada.

The move comes after Trump slapped 25 per cent tariffs on imported light-duty vehicles and major auto parts in April, although there are partial exemptions for Canada and Mexico linked to the North American trade pact. Canada retaliated with counter-tariffs on U.S. autos, but soon granted a carve-out for companies making vehicles in Canada—so long as they kept those operations going and followed through on planned investment.

While Stellantis told Ontario Premier Doug Ford it would keep the Brampton plant open, the company has not shared its plan for the future of the factory or its workers. Stellantis promised the federal government in May that it would preserve Canadian jobs. Asked about that promise on Wednesday, Stellantis spokesperson LouAnn Gosselin said, “We have plans for Brampton and will share them upon further discussions with the Canadian government.”

Those discussions could be heated. Unifor national president Lana Payne accused Stellantis, which has promised not to close any plants during the term of the union’s 2023-2026 collective agreement, of sacrificing jobs “on the Trump altar.” Meanwhile, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly suggested that the country could sue Stellantis for defaulting on its funding agreements with the government. “Should Stellantis choose not to respect its obligations, we will act in the interests of all Canadians and hold the company to full account, and exercise all options, including legal,” Joly wrote Wednesday to CEO Antonio Filosa in a letter obtained by The Logic.

For a company like Stellantis—which lost €2.3 billion in the first half of 2025 and expects to pay about €1.5 billion in tariffs this year—the investment is a turnabout: the plan is its biggest spending spree to date, one that will require 3,300 hires in Illinois alone. 

“This would have been unthinkable six months ago,” said Sam Fiorani, vice-president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions, a U.S.-based consulting firm, who said the investment is surprising because it will cut output at factories that were designed to make vehicles like the Jeep Compass, while asking other U.S. factories to make multiple, different types of vehicles under one roof.

Both analysts and Canadian officials say that political pressure from the White House is likely to blame. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick raised the ire of Ontario’s premier last week when he bluntly told a crowd at a Canada-U.S. conference in Toronto just how serious Trump is about having auto assembly move to his country. “America is first, and Canada can be second,” the Toronto Star reported Lutnick saying. 

Despite a bevy of federal incentives offered to automakers, employment in the sector has weakened and for small- and medium-sized auto suppliers, business has stagnated as Trump’s tariffs disrupt the industry, which relies on a high degree of cross-border integration. 

The idle 2.95-million-square-foot Stellantis factory in Brampton is perhaps the most visible symbol of how much Canada’s auto workers are struggling amid the trade war, as unemployment spikes in auto towns across the country.

The nearly 40-year-old factory just northwest of Toronto is one of the biggest employers in Brampton—Ontario’s third largest city with a population of 791,486, where other major employers include Amazon and a Canadian Tire distribution centre. Stellantis closed the plant for remodeling at the beginning of 2024, with the expectation that it would reopen partially this year with 2,370 jobs. The company delayed that plan in February. Now, Ford said, the workers may feel they must move to Windsor to compete for one of the 1,500 jobs Stellantis is offering there. 

Carney said he has a plan to entice companies like Stellantis to change their minds and keep jobs in Brampton—including incentives in the forthcoming Nov. 4 federal budget. But Stephen Beatty, a former executive at Toyota Canada, noted that the Canadian government already had a way to force automakers to build cars domestically: its plan to grant relief from counter-tariffs only to auto companies that created Canadian jobs. It’s not clear if that policy has been effective since the agreements with automakers were never made public, he said.

Stellantis was an easy target for the Trump administration. Jeep sales crumpled in the last few years. Former CEO Carlos Tavares’s ouster left it with a five-month boardroom power vacuum. Dealers struggled to sell old inventory. Then came Trump, who put pressure directly on the company as soon as he took office, specifically about the Illinois plant.

That doesn’t mean Stellantis is the only automaker with vulnerable Canadian operations, said Beatty.

“I think there’s trouble here, and I think it’s spreading now,” said Beatty.

Trump has said he sees a “natural conflict” between Canada and the U.S. in the auto sector. “It’s a tough situation, because we want to make our cars here. At the same time, we want Canada to do well making cars,” he said when he met Carney in the Oval Office earlier this month.

After Lutnick’s comments last week, Ford made clear he would consider retaliating, reviving his threat to cut the U.S. off from Ontario’s critical minerals and energy. Dominic LeBlanc, the federal minister for Canada-U.S. trade, told reporters after Trump and Carney’s Oval Office meeting that Ottawa hopes to secure deals on steel, aluminum and energy. He did not say the same about autos.

Jean-Sebastien Comeau, a spokesperson for LeBlanc, said the minister is back in Washington, D.C., this week to speak with senior U.S. officials “as Canada works toward an agreement with the United States.”

Beatty said Canada should also consider bringing negotiations directly to automakers.

“If I were the Carney government, I’d be calling the [Detroit] automakers into Ottawa to have a conversation.”