Why is a Canadian union leader collaborating with government anti-Chinese EVs push?
Unifor’s National President, Lana Payne, in discussions with Liberal Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and other individuals, on ‘priorities for #budget2023 for Cdn workers.’ Credit: ‘X’/@Lanampayne
Written by: Aidan Jonah
The Financial Post reported that when Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland, announced a 30-day consultation for potential raising of tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), Unifor’s National President, Lana Payne, was right beside her. In fact, the Toronto Star notes that Payne fully endorsed the idea of harsher tariffs, saying Unifor “welcomes any federal action to guard against unfair Chinese EV imports”.
So what gives? Why is a Canadian union leader standing alongside a Canadian government minister, and the President of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, to condemn China? This President, Flavio Volpe being an ardent Zionist, and anti-communist (those who support China’s progress in the face of Western harassment are ‘not for democratic values’), who has called genocide-supporting Zionist MP Anthony Housefather a “thoughtful leader”.
The West’s refusal to grapple with why Chinese EVs can be cheaper
The fundamental reason for the success of Chinese EVs versus the failure of the West to keep up, is China’s socialism. Even the serial whiners such as Flavio Volpe have some clue about why Chinese EVs can be cheaper, but is angry about it, rather than being capable of accepting reality. He retweeted Tony LaMantia, who explained that:
“Chinese-owned EV firms can keep production going, incur losses without any negative impacts as they roll over loans from State-owned lenders--"a rolling loan carries no loss."
LaMantia does not question why state-backed manufacturing is capable of delivering better prices, where China’s socialism utilises the market to spark the innovation that comes with competition in certain industries, while the people’s will reigns supreme over capital. Instead, LaMantia says “Chinese companies do not play by our rules, so why enter a rigged race for lower-cost EVs at this time?”
It’s far easier for a capitalist to call the EV competition a “rigged race”, than accept that the socialist economic model allows for more efficient, cheaper production, that isn’t ‘unclean’, like Freeland and others want to claim.’
And the ‘oversupply’ claim, from Freeland (who called Chinese EV’s a ‘threat’ to Canada) and others, is also as laughable as it sounds. The complaint fundamentally is that China can produce products more efficiently, therefore having a better situation to offer strong prices that could boost its position in a foreign market for a commodity or product, coming thanks to China’s socialist economic model.
The West will continue to rage about Chinese production capability, but they certainly lack coherent plans to step away from Chinese commodities and products without massively hurting their own citizens.
Western chauvinism, and union collaboration in their state’s anti-China push
On March 12, 2024, the Financial Times reported that “US steel unions urge Joe Biden to open probe into Chinese shipbuilding”. Immediately of note is that the “petition [against ‘unfair economic practices in the shipbuilding and maritime logistics sectors’] was made under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 — the same statute that former president Donald Trump used to justify the imposition of tariffs on Chinese imports when he launched a trade war with Beijing in 2018.”
The outright class collaboration of the United Steel Workers’ leadership is stunning. Speaking to The Financial Times, USW president David McCall said:
“The United States was once a leader in the commercial shipbuilding industry, but over the past two decades, the Chinese Communist party enacted a comprehensive strategy to dominate the full spectrum of global trade, making massive investments in shipbuilding and engaging in predatory trade practices”.
Furthermore, USW was proud to directly “work with the Biden administration on growing domestic supply chains again”, as the US delusionally attempts to de-couple from China. Even the US military is reminding US Congress of this being an impossible task without significant failures as a result.
Here you see a trend emerge, as Western chauvinists upset about Chinese economic success target state-backed industrial policy that functions effectively because it comes under the umbrella of socialist economic policy. The Financial Times says that:
“The USW petition will claim that Chinese shipbuilders have benefited from protectionist government policies, including preferential financing ranging from state-run bank loans to tax breaks.”
And other members of the US elite were on board with targeting China trade, as the FT noted that “Pennsylvania Democratic senator Bob Casey said the Chinese government was a ‘predatory regime’ that had been undermining US industry and workers for many years.”
Why, as labour union, question why the socialist economic system allows for superior efficiency and final prices, when you can collaborate with your imperialist government to demonize socialism, and beg for your piece of the stolen pie?
And US unions haven’t only whined about trade practices. As the Grayzone exposed in 2021, US unions, via the Workers Rights Consortium, directed a “Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region”, the leadership filled with “AFL-CIO labor federation [members], Uyghur exile organizations based in Washington DC, and Hong Kong-based separatist activists”, which pressed US apparel companies to leave China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
Class collaboration doesn’t end well for working people historically, but US union leadership seems hellbent on pursuing it, on China policy at least, until the resulting bitter end. One major Canadian union is joining them in pursuing class collaboration with them against China, just alongside the Canadian government.
Canadian labour bureaucracy licks the Canadian state’s boot, not only on China
The Canadian labour bureaucracy has little concept of a backbone towards the most crucial elements of Canadian imperialism. Canadian union leadership will bemoan the innocent victims in Gaza, but can’t be trusted to stand with the Palestinian resistance, and even when they do, they can be quickly bullied out of it by the Zionist lobby and Canadian mainstream media. They will still support student encampments for Palestine in Canada, but that is the grand extent of their bravery. It is easy to support easy pure victims, but to support armed resistance to colonialism? That takes a real backbone.
The Canadian labour bureaucracy has also supported NATO’s proxy war on Russia, a proxy war Conservative MP Tom Kmiec directly admitted was ongoing in 2023. The Canadian unions never spoke up for the people of Donbass who sought independence and were brutally bombed and attacked by the Ukrainian government which came from a 2014 coup backed by neo-Nazis, who people in the Donbass didn’t view as a legitimate government to represent them.
But CUPE could immediately move to condemn Russia’s Special Military Operation on February 25, 2022, one day after it began. Other unions in Canada followed in their footsteps. In December 2022, the BC Federation of Labour’s convention resolution promised to work with the Canadian Labour Congress to assist the Nazi-apologist Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) operations for Ukrainian refugees, further enabling the Canadian-state manufactured power the UCC holds in the Ukrainian Canadian diaspora. BCFL and other Canadian unions were fine with the Maidan coup, but them and other Canadian unions couldn’t care less about the Ukrainian coup regime’s war on labour since 2014, nor Canada and the broader West’s looting of Ukraine. The BCFL and other Canadian unions never even cared about the fascist massacre of 42 at the Odessa federation of trade unions in 2014, after the Maidan coup.
What links even just China, Palestine and Ukraine together, among other things, is they face impacts of the Western chauvinism, which can lead to labour engaging in class collaboration with imperialism, to protect their own material interest to get part of the stolen loot taken from other countries. They also face, much more broadly, a mentality of western supremacism were the West leads and ‘helps’ the world, which Canadian labour has often supported.
While Canadian labour has sometimes stood against imperialist machinations, such as the Chile coup, by fighting to get Chilean refugees to Canada, it has historically failed to fight imperialism, as Yves Engler notes. Now Canadian labour is failing to oppose imperialism in a truly pathetic manner in the present day.
Some workers/labour union members seek to change that, a positive initiative whose early effects can be seen in Palestine solidarity organizing within Canada. Workers can succeed in getting organized labour to sustainably fight imperialism, but there’s a long road ahead to get there.
In the meantime, Canadians are going to lose out, in part thanks to labour collaborationism.
Hurt the ordinary Canadian yet again, for geopolitical machinations
Canada already burned its relationship with Chinese telecommunications company Huawei by kidnapping Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou on the US’ behalf in 2018, banning Huawei gear from 5G networks in Canada in 2022, and intimidating universities away from research cooperation with Huawei in 2023, which further consolidated the grip of the big telecommunications companies which charge Canadians exorbitant prices even compared to Europe.
So, there is precedent for Canada targeting Chinese companies.
And as the corporate elite representative Volpe said when in the US, about Chinese EVs and tariffs,
“It’s important for our biggest ally [the USA] to understand that we value & respect the reciprocal nature of this relationship.”
If Canada matches US tariffs on Chinese EVs in a reciprocal manner, tariffs would go up to above 100 per cent.
Remarkably, Canadian EVs are so expensive that the price offerings could still be slightly less, similar or often more, in that case. A BYD EV, the ‘Seagull’, launched this year, sells for $12,000 USD (around $16,000 CAD). Even with hypothetical 100 per cent or more tariffs, and some Canadian state rebates (subsidies in reality) on EV purchases, the cost of this EV - if brought to Canada - would likely be similar or equivalent to the Chevrolet Bolt, which has a $40,000 CAD cost before any rebates. This is a staggering indication of how far behind Canada is compared to China on EVs.
And that is the crux of the story, as even a Toronto Star op-ed warns, “Not everyone can afford a $50,000 car. Our leaders should remember that before hitting Chinese EVs with sky-high tariffs”.
To make it even worse, the Financial Post notes that even ‘blocking Chinese investment in new Canadian factories.’ is being considered by Canada’s government. These new factories would create, get this, more union jobs, a boon for organized labour, while making EVs in Canada. But imperial hostility to China is prioritized instead by Canada’s government. What fantastic early results obtained by the class collaborator, Unifor’s National President Lana Payne, in exchange for helping the Canadian state’s imperial machinations against China.
Canadian citizens’ well-being and even economic situation is simply not a concern for Canadian elites, and seemingly one Canadian trade union leader, in comparison to the maintenance of imperialism – by targeting Chinese exports, even as they are cheaper for Canadians and good for the environment.
Canadians deserve better, but they’ll have to organize for it, rather than pleading aimlessly.
Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
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