US Steel for Canadian Warships

By: David Pugliese, The Vancouver Sun 

The Canadian navy’s new supply ships are being constructed of U.S. steel even as President Donald Trump punishes Canadian producers of the same product with a 25-per-cent tariff.

The supply ships are being built at the Vancouver shipyards of Seaspan, which is owned by a U.S. company. The Department of National Defence confirmed the steel is being purchased from a mill in Alabama, a solidly Republican state that voted 62 per cent for Trump.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan cut some of the first U.S. steel for the ships at a June 15 ceremony, the same day that Trump launched yet another verbal attack on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau while praising North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Trump has brought in tariffs of 25 per cent on Canadian-made steel and 10 per cent on Canadian aluminum. His government has stated that Canadian steel and aluminum pose a national security threat to the U.S.

Trump also lashed out at Trudeau as “dishonest and weak,” after the prime minister reiterated his position that U.S. steel and other products would face retaliatory tariffs. In addition, Trump has promised to punish Canadians in other ways on the economic front.

The government awarded Seaspan an initial $66-million contact to begin building 52 sections of the new naval supply ships, or about 20 per cent of the vessels. DND said the steel for the ships was ordered “a number of months ago.”

“While Canadian mills will continue to be considered for future chapters of the project, there simply was no Canadian mill who could supply the required certified steel of suitable size and grade at the time it was required,” the DND said in an email.

But Joseph Galimberti, president of the Canadian Steel Producers Association, said domestic firms can supply enough product.

“There is capacity in the Canadian steel industry to participate in these projects,” he said Wednesday. “As a general rule, we have very high quality, quite innovative, extraordinary cost-effective producers in Canada and would like to be considered for participation” in the government’s shipbuilding programs.

Galimberti pointed out that U.S. steel producers actively lobbied the Trump administration to make sure their Canadian competitors faced tariffs. The situation with the supply ships sees those U.S. firms protected in their home markets but still profiting on sales for a Canadian government project, he noted.

“If you wanted to respond to the U.S. tariffs but you are exempting U.S steel producers who are behind the U.S. tariffs, then you have failed,” Galimberti added.

Two supply ships will be built at Seaspan. The project will cost $3.4 billion, of which 60 per cent goes for the construction of the ships.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, left, cuts steel for the first of two Joint Support Ships for Canada’s Navy at the Seaspan Shipyards in Vancouver, June, 15, 2018. JONATHAN HAYWARD/THE CANADIAN PRESS

At one point, the first ship was supposed to arrive in 2012. That has been changed a number of times, with the government later hoping for a 2018 delivery and then a 2019 arrival for the first vessel. DND is now hoping for the delivery of the first ship in 2022 or 2023. The Joint Support Ships are critical as they provide fuel and supplies for warships at sea. The Royal Canadian Navy retired its last two aging supply ships years ago.

Trump continues to threaten various nations, including Canada, with additional tariffs. But his economic policies are also backfiring on some U.S. firms.

Increased steel costs because of the tariffs forced the Mid-Continent Nail plant in Poplar Bluff, Missouri to recently lay off 60 of its 500 employees.

The company is in danger of shutting production by September unless the U.S. government grants it an exclusion from paying the tariffs, company spokesman James Glassman told CNN.

The plant is located in an area that overwhelmingly voted for Trump.

Harley-Davidson has also announced it will move the production overseas of motorcycles to be sold in Europe. The company decided on the move since the European Union has imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S.-built motorcycles.

Trump responded to the decision by Harley-Davidson by threatening to increase its taxes.

Is Canada a Security Threat to the US? No - Canadians Actually Help Keep US Safe.

By: Tristen Hopper, The National Post

It's been two days since President Trump called Prime Minister Trudeau 'weak' and a 'backstabber', and it’s been a week since the Trump Administration slapped Canada with steel and aluminum tariffs on the ground that reliance on our imports was threatening the “national security” of the United States.

If Canadians are particularly galled at this, it might be because no foreign country in modern times has done more to arm and equip the United States than Canada. “I would not be surprised if every single major aircraft or warship in U.S. military service today has Canadian components in it,” said Richard Shimooka, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

Below, a cursory summary of some of the Canadian stuff used by history’s most powerful military.

Landing gear

We’ll start with an entry that directly concerns steel and aluminum. Quebec-based Héroux-Devtek is the world’s third largest aircraft landing gear company, and some of that is thanks to a longstanding relationship with the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy. Specifically, Héroux-Devtek is in charge of landing gear repair and overhaul for several large U.S. aircraft, including the heavy-lift C-130 Hercules. Of course, landing gear is made almost entirely of steel or aluminum. So, thanks to these new tariffs, American military procurers are either going to start getting hosed on their Héroux-Devtek contracts — or they’re going to have start getting their landing gear overhauls from a U.S. company that isn’t their first choice.

Armoured personnel carriers

“Canada and the US have been building military equipment for each other since the summer of 1940,” David Bercuson, a military historian at the University of Calgary, told the National Post. “Literally billions of dollars of such equipment has passed the border since then.” The most obvious example is the Stryker. There are nearly 5,000 Stryker armoured personnel carriers in the U.S. military, and all of them were built in London, Ontario. Not only that, but the Stryker is even based on a Canadian design, the LAV III. Coming in at a rock bottom $4 million apiece, the Americans use Strykers for everything: Ambulances, firefighting, missile platforms, chemical weapons defence and mine detection. They even started rigging them up with giant lasers to shoot down enemy drones. Armoured vehicles happen to be a Canadian specialty. While the United States was busy throwing money at big ticket items such as tanks and attack helicopters, the shoestring Canadians have gotten very good at the much cheaper task of simply strapping guns and armour to oversized trucks. And if a U.S. diplomat found themselves touring Iraq in an armoured Toyota Land Cruiser, chances are good they were shielded from bullets and IEDs by Canadian workmanship.

Stryker in action. Trevor Robb/Edmonton Sun/QMI Agency

Specialized aircraft

The United States Army Parachute Team leap out of a modified Twin Otter. United States Military

Here again, the United States has it covered when it comes to big ticket aircraft such as fighters or bombers. But the U.S. military will occasionally call up Canadian plane-makers when it needs something quirky. Bombardier has retooled some of its airliners and business jets to act as airborne radar platforms. When the United States Army Parachute Team appears at air shows, they’re jumping out of a Canadian-made de Havilland Twin Otter. De Havilland has also hooked up the Americans with some of its famously rugged prop planes for use in electronic warfare, remote cargo drops or simply moving National Guard troops around Alaska. All told, the U.S. military is flying more planes built in Canada than in any other foreign country.

The U.S. military’s only cargo drone (and it has the most Canadian name imaginable)
A U.S. special forces unit is pinned down on a remote Central Asian mountaintop. Surrounded by militants on all sides, it needs an emergency airlift of water and ammunition to even see daybreak. Enter the SnowGoose, an unmanned autogyro specializing in precision deliveries to special forces. The SnowGoose is the U.S. military’s only cargo drone, and it’s an all-Canadian creation. An emerging theme on this list is that Canada is great at building niche military hardware for cheap, and the SnowGoose is no exception. As the drone’s Stittsville, Ont. builders note, it can move cargo across a battlefield at a fraction of the price of other drones.

Nuclear Fuel

Uranium is a big part of the modern U.S. military. It has more than 100 nuclear-powered vessels in the navy, and there’s also those 7,000 atomic weapons it still has lying around. Canada has sold a whole lot of uranium to the U.S. military, going all the way back to the initial atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. However, the taps were somewhat shut off in the 1960s, when Canada started limiting uranium exports to “peaceful” purposes. Still, with Canada ranking as the United States’ top uranium dealer, we help keep their uranium topped up enough to have plenty left over for the military. With the Trump administration in the midst of a Trillion Dollor Nuclear Modernization plan, keeping Canada friendly is probably a good idea. 

Speaking of nuclear weapons, it might behoove the White House to remember that if a Russian or North Korean missile should happen to be fired in their direction, a Canada-based NORAD station will likely be among the first to let them know.

Making fighter jets last forever

This entry should fill thrifty Canadians with particular pride: We’ve gotten so good at squeezing every penny out of our CF-18s that we’re now globally renowned experts at fighter jet life extension. Among other things, Canada invented “robotic shot-peening,” a method of using robots to restore aging aircraft with a precision never before known. The technology has been exported to Europe, Australia and, in 2013, the U.S. Navy brought in the Quebec aerospace company L-3 MAS to give its jets a makeover.

A very old, but very well taken-care-of, CF-18. File

Battlefield communications
Tactical radios are another niche technology in which Canadian companies have a built a slow but steady reputation with the Americans. In a 2017 reporton Canada/U.S. military industrial cooperation, the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted that the U.S. military has been using Canadian radios since the 1960s. Ultra TCS, headquartered in Montreal, remains a supplier of tactical radios to both the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. And these aren’t just walkie-talkies; they’re hyper-advanced networks that can provide email, voice and even video hook-ups to American troops in battle.

Jeeps

That’s right. The Second World War-era Willys Jeep — one of the most American vehicles in history — was manufactured in part by Canada. Ford Motor Company of Canada churned out thousands of Jeeps after the Second World War. In 1952 alone, Canadian factories were making an average of seven of them per day. According to Ford Canada’s website, “these postwar Canadian-made Jeep were shipped to the United States, for the American military forces.”

A 1952 Willys Jeep similar to what Canada would have been manufacturing for the United States. file. 

Space robots

The space shuttle was initially envisioned as a vehicle to steal Russian military satellites, in which the Canadarm would have been critical. Max Harrold/Postmedia News

DARPA is the U.S. agency tasked with pursuing military so cutting edge that they occasionally veer into outright science fiction. Last year, DARPA signed a deal with Canada’s MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates to design robots that could be dispatched into space in order to repair U.S. military satellites. And like most times Canada is brought in for U.S. military stuff, the robot space mechanic program is indeed intended as a cost saving measure. Canada has been a leader in space defence for some time. Our beloved Canadarm, in fact, technically qualifies as an early military space robot. Over the course of the space shuttle program 11 missions were sent up to perform classified work for the Pentagon. We still don’t know the specifics of what the Canadarm did for Uncle Sam on those missions, but the arm is a certifiable Cold Warrior.