New trucks crowd a parking lot at the GM assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont., in September, 2019. U.S. protectionism has brought visibility and urgency to the auto industry’s decades-long drift.CHRIS HELGREN/Reuters

Greig Mordue is an associate professor and the ArcelorMittal Dofasco Chair in Advanced Manufacturing Policy in the faculty of engineering at McMaster University.

Canada’s auto industry is struggling. The challenges presented by the current U.S. administration have only brought visibility and urgency to its decades-long drift.

Even so, it has not yet collapsed. The reason does not reside in the $50-billion-plus in tax credits and grants that Canada’s policy makers have poured into it over the past few years. Rather, Canada’s auto industry endures because of industrial policy measures it took decades prior. Now we must draw upon that playbook once more.

In the early 1960s, Canada’s auto industry was also under pressure. The economy was sputtering, car sales dropped and automotive employment cratered. Tariffs of 17.5 per cent on imported vehicles meant that almost every car sold in Canada was made here. Canadians had few options and paid more for the ones they........

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