April 3 (UPI) — Stellantis on Thursday paused work at two assembly plants in Mexico and Canada Thursday to work around President Donald Trump’s 25% automotive tariffs.
Work will be paused for two weeks at its Windsor Assembly Plant in Ontario starting on Monday, Canada and for all of April at its Toluca Assembly Plant in Mexico.
Workers at the Mexican plant will still report to work daily but not work on making cars, as per their contracts.
The company temporarily laid off around 900 American workers and close to 4,500 Canadian employees
Stellantis paused production temporarily at the Warren and Sterling stamping plants in Michigan and the Indiana and Kokomo transmission plants and Kokomo Casting in Indiana.
Stelantis North American CEO Antonio Filosa said the decision was made as the company ways the impact of the Trump tariffs in a memo to employees.
“We are continuing to assess the medium- and long-term effects of these tariffs on our operations, but also have decided to take some of our Canadian and Mexican assembly plants,” he said. “Those actions will impact some employees at several of our U.S. powertrain and stamping facilities that support those operations.”
The private sector union Unifor, which represents thousands of workers at Windsor Assembly Plant put out a statement that confirmed the layoffs.
“Unifor warned that U.S. tariffs would hurt auto workers almost immediately and in this case the layoffs were announced before the auto tariff even came into effect,” said Unifor National President Lana Payne in the statement, and that “Trump is about to learn how interconnected the North American production system is the hard way, with auto workers paying the price for that lesson.”
