The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition that Cleveland-Cliffs plans to lay off of up to 500 steelworkers at the Stelco plant in Hamilton and Lake Erie Works site in Nanticoke, Ont. Guest columnist Nicolas Lamp writes that what's happening between Canada and the United States is not a traditional trade dispute. Rather, this is an attempt by the United States to unilaterally change the rules. The Trump administration seeks to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. and therefore no longer wants to provide the duty-free access to the U.S. market that Canadian industry depends on. It could not care less that this is a radical departure from decades of U.S. trade policy and inconsistent with its international trade commitments. There is thus no "dispute" in the narrow sense that could be resolved through some sort of international mediation or dispute settlement. The U.S. is now happy to deindustrialize Canada. The steelworkers in Hamilton are thus not collateral damage in the trade war; they are the target. For Ottawa, it is unclear whether the Canadian steel industry has a future without access to the U.S. market; there is massive steel overcapacity globally and the financial commitment could be enormous.
© 2026 Canjex Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved.