Business

In Canada’s ‘Suburb of Detroit,’ Fears Over Trump’s Tariff Threat

Published

11 months ago

January 18, 2025

In Canada’s ‘Suburb of Detroit,’ Fears Over Trump’s Tariff Threat

Since 1988, the hulking presses at Lanex Manufacturing on the edge of Windsor, Ontario, have been stamping out door strikers, folding-seat latches, tailpipe hangers, frame braces and other prosaic bits of metal that make their way into vehicles ranging from Corvettes to Honda minivans.

But, these days, worries about the future permeate the plant as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to enter the White House. He has threatened to impose a 25 percent tariff on all goods exported from Canada to the United States. In Windsor, that would ravage its lifeblood: automobiles and everything that goes into them.

“Everybody’s waiting for the next shoe to drop,” Bruce Lane, the president of Lanex, said in its boardroom, whose walls were made of painted concrete blocks. “If Windsor lost its automotive business, Windsor would not survive.”

Few Canadian cities are as acutely aware as Windsor of the integration of the two countries’ economies. The city sits just across the Detroit River from Detroit, and Canada’s maple-leaf flag often flies next to the stars and stripes there. And no industry has been interwoven across the border for as long as auto making.

“These workers here in Windsor are more exposed to trade with the United States than anyone else,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at a steel plant during a recent visit to the city.

Mr. Trump, he added, “is proposing tariffs that would damage not just people here in Windsor but people right across the country and indeed in the United States.”

Windsor’s two major landmarks are shared with Detroit: the $5.7 billion Gordie Howe International Bridge, scheduled to open this year, and the 96-year-old Ambassador Bridge, which carries about $300 million in cross-border trade each day. Of Canada’s $440 billion in annual exports to the United States, only oil and gas generate a larger amount than cars, trucks and auto parts.

But with Canadian officials taking Mr. Trump at his word that he will follow through on his threat of tariffs, Mr. Lane and others in the auto industry are already bracing for the potential fallout.

George Papp is the chief executive of Papp Plastics, whose headquarters sits near the imposing new suspension bridge. He said his U.S. customers, mainly automakers, would simply invoke the terms of contracts he has with them and deduct the cost of tariffs from the amount they pay him.

“Who’s going to take the hit?” Mr. Papp said. “Me, and people like me and companies like mine.”

Flavio Volpe, the president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturer’s Association, a Canadian trade group, estimated that most of his members had single-digit profit margins and that the tariffs Mr. Trump was threatening would be ruinous.

The intertwining of the auto industry across the two countries was cemented in 1965 when Canada and the United States reached an agreement that effectively eliminated the border for the industry. Today, 90 percent of cars and trucks made in Canada are sent to the United States, primarily by train.

At Lanex, small metal parts that few motorists will ever see are forged into shape by upward of 600 tons of pressure by the firm’s presses. Their journeys illustrate how enmeshed the two countries’ auto industries have become.

As a small supplier, Mr. Lane does not deal directly with carmakers, but sells his goods through larger parts makers. Seat-locking hooks that Lanex makes for Honda minivans are sent to a plant elsewhere in Ontario, where they are fitted with other parts and then shipped to an assembly line in Alabama that belongs to Honda, a Japanese company.

Mr. Lane’s factory has sent parts to Michigan for heat treating, brought them back to Windsor for more machining and then sold them to a U.S. company.

“Windsor is used to going back and forth across the border,” Mr. Lane said. “It’s like just like getting up out of bed in the morning.”

The turmoil from possible tariffs comes at an already difficult time for Canada’s auto business. Many auto-parts manufacturers have yet to see their business return to levels from before the coronavirus pandemic because of lagging car sales. In 2020, Lanex had about 60 employees working on two shifts, but it now has about two dozen employees running a single shift.

The anxiety is particularly acute in Windsor, which has a metropolitan population of roughly 484,000. Aside from cargo trucks rumbling across the Ambassador Bridge, the city’s most obvious automotive symbol is a giant Stellantis factory that produces Chrysler Pacifica minivans as well as Dodge Charger muscle cars.

A city within the city, the European-based Stellantis employs 4,500 workers at the factory. Aided by billions of dollars in Canadian subsidies, it is building a battery plant in a joint venture with the South Korean company LG in Windsor and recently spent 1.89 billion Canadian dollars (about $1.3 billion) to retool its assembly plant to make electric vehicles alongside gasoline-powered ones.

But, like many auto makers, Stellantis is now in a slump as it struggles with the transition to electric vehicles and with competition from China.

James Stewart, the president of the local union that represents Windsor’s Stellantis workers, said he did not believe a large tariff would necessarily deal a fatal blow to Stellantis’s operations in Windsor, given how much the company had invested.

But with so much of Windsor’s economic well-being intimately tied to trade with the United States, Mr. Stewart said, tariffs would deal a heavy blow, including the closing of businesses, layoffs and production cuts.

“We’re a suburb of Detroit; we’ve always felt that way,” he said, adding that Windsor seemed to be “under attack and for no reason.”

Mr. Trump initially characterized tariffs as a way to prod Canada and Mexico into better securing their borders to tamp down the flow of undocumented migrants.

But he also mused about making Canada the 51st state, noting that the United States was heavily invested in Canada’s military defense, and threatened to use economic force annex it. He has also vented about what he describes as the “subsidizing’’ of Canada by the United States, an apparent reference to the U.S. trade deficit with Canada, largely because of oil and gas imports.

The Trudeau government is expected to detail how it would retaliate against any U.S. tariffs on Monday, the day Mr. Trump is to take office.

But Canada’s comparatively small economy makes it difficult for the country to inflict substantial economic harm on the United States, though levies against specific products could hurt individual states. Retaliatory tariffs would also drive up prices in Canada.

Back at the Lanex plant, Mr. Lane said that, by pure coincidence, the company had been embarking on a “secret” manufacturing project unrelated to automobiles and that had unexpectedly become a potential hedge against tariffs. He declined to offer any details to avoid tipping off competitors.

Mr. Papp, the plastics-company owner, said that even though he would oppose tariffs, which would hurt his business, he was a fan of Mr. Trump and understood why the president-elect had argued that tariffs were needed to help rebuild industry in the United States.

Regardless of what happens, Mr. Papp said, Canada and the United States will always remain unshakable allies.

“You can’t separate our countries,” he said. “They’re bolted together.”

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Business

They graduated from Stanford. Due to AI, they can’t find a job

Published

4 hours ago

December 19, 2025

Press Room

They graduated from Stanford. Due to AI, they can’t find a job

A Stanford software engineering degree used to be a golden ticket. Artificial intelligence has devalued it to bronze, recent graduates say.

The elite students are shocked by the lack of job offers as they finish studies at what is often ranked as the top university in America.

When they were freshmen, ChatGPT hadn’t yet been released upon the world. Today, AI can code better than most humans.

Top tech companies just don’t need as many fresh graduates.

“Stanford computer science graduates are struggling to find entry-level jobs” with the most prominent tech brands, said Jan Liphardt, associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University. “I think that’s crazy.”

While the rapidly advancing coding capabilities of generative AI have made experienced engineers more productive, they have also hobbled the job prospects of early-career software engineers.

Stanford students describe a suddenly skewed job market, where just a small slice of graduates — those considered “cracked engineers” who already have thick resumes building products and doing research — are getting the few good jobs, leaving everyone else to fight for scraps.

“There’s definitely a very dreary mood on campus,” said a recent computer science graduate who asked not to be named so they could speak freely. “People [who are] job hunting are very stressed out, and it’s very hard for them to actually secure jobs.”

The shake-up is being felt across California colleges, including UC Berkeley, USC and others. The job search has been even tougher for those with less prestigious degrees.

Eylul Akgul graduated last year with a degree in computer science from Loyola Marymount University. She wasn’t getting offers, so she went home to Turkey and got some experience at a startup. In May, she returned to the U.S., and still, she was “ghosted” by hundreds of employers.

“The industry for programmers is getting very oversaturated,” Akgul said.

The engineers’ most significant competitor is getting stronger by the day. When ChatGPT launched in 2022, it could only code for 30 seconds at a time. Today’s AI agents can code for hours, and do basic programming faster with fewer mistakes.

Data suggests that even though AI startups like OpenAI and Anthropic are hiring many people, it is not offsetting the decline in hiring elsewhere. Employment for specific groups, such as early-career software developers between the ages of 22 and 25 has declined by nearly 20% from its peak in late 2022, according to a Stanford study.

It wasn’t just software engineers, but also customer service and accounting jobs that were highly exposed to competition from AI. The Stanford study estimated that entry-level hiring for AI-exposed jobs declined 13% relative to less-exposed jobs such as nursing.

In the Los Angeles region, another study estimated that close to 200,000 jobs are exposed. Around 40% of tasks done by call center workers, editors and personal finance experts could be automated and done by AI, according to an AI Exposure Index curated by resume builder MyPerfectResume.

Many tech startups and titans have not been shy about broadcasting that they are cutting back on hiring plans as AI allows them to do more programming with fewer people.

Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei said that 70% to 90% of the code for some products at his company is written by his company’s AI, called Claude. In May, he predicted that AI’s capabilities will increase until close to 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs might be wiped out in five years.

A common sentiment from hiring managers is that where they previously needed ten engineers, they now only need “two skilled engineers and one of these LLM-based agents,” which can be just as productive, said Nenad Medvidović, a computer science professor at the University of Southern California.

“We don’t need the junior developers anymore,” said Amr Awadallah, CEO of Vectara, a Palo Alto-based AI startup. “The AI now can code better than the average junior developer that comes out of the best schools out there.”

To be sure, AI is still a long way from causing the extinction of software engineers. As AI handles structured, repetitive tasks, human engineers’ jobs are shifting toward oversight.

Today’s AIs are powerful but “jagged,” meaning they can excel at certain math problems yet still fail basic logic tests and aren’t consistent. One study found that AI tools made experienced developers 19% slower at work, as they spent more time reviewing code and fixing errors.

Students should focus on learning how to manage and check the work of AI as well as getting experience working with it, said John David N. Dionisio, a computer science professor at LMU.

Stanford students say they are arriving at the job market and finding a split in the road; capable AI engineers can find jobs, but basic, old-school computer science jobs are disappearing.

As they hit this surprise speed bump, some students are lowering their standards and joining companies they wouldn’t have considered before. Some are creating their own startups. A large group of frustrated grads are deciding to continue their studies to beef up their resumes and add more skills needed to compete with AI.

“If you look at the enrollment numbers in the past two years, they’ve skyrocketed for people wanting to do a fifth-year master’s,” the Stanford graduate said. “It’s a whole other year, a whole other cycle to do recruiting. I would say, half of my friends are still on campus doing their fifth-year master’s.”

After four months of searching, LMU graduate Akgul finally landed a technical lead job at a software consultancy in Los Angeles. At her new job, she uses AI coding tools, but she feels like she has to do the work of three developers.

Universities and students will have to rethink their curricula and majors to ensure that their four years of study prepare them for a world with AI.

“That’s been a dramatic reversal from three years ago, when all of my undergraduate mentees found great jobs at the companies around us,” Stanford’s Liphardt said. “That has changed.”

Business

Disney+ to be part of a streaming bundle in Middle East

Published

16 hours ago

December 18, 2025

Press Room

Disney+ to be part of a streaming bundle in Middle East

Walt Disney Co. is expanding its presence in the Middle East, inking a deal with Saudi media conglomerate MBC Group and UAE firm Anghami to form a streaming bundle.

The bundle will allow customers in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to access a trio of streaming services — Disney+; MBC Group’s Shahid, which carries Arabic originals, live sports and events; and Anghami’s OSN+, which carries Arabic productions as well as Hollywood content.

The trio bundle costs AED89.99 per month, which is the price of two of the streaming services.

“This deal reflects a shared ambition between Disney+, Shahid and the MBC Group to shape the future of entertainment in the Middle East, a region that is seeing dynamic growth in the sector,” Karl Holmes, senior vice president and general manager of Disney+ EMEA, said in a statement.

Disney has already indicated it plans to grow in the Middle East.

Earlier this year, the company announced it would be building a new theme park in Abu Dhabi in partnership with local firm Miral, which would provide the capital, construction resources and operational oversight. Under the terms of the agreement, Disney would oversee the parks’ design, license its intellectual property and provide “operational expertise,” as well as collect a royalty.

Disney executives said at the time that the decision to build in the Middle East was a way to reach new audiences who were too far from the company’s current hubs in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

Business

Erewhon and others shut by fire set to reopen in Pacific Palisades mall

Published

1 day ago

December 18, 2025

Press Room

Erewhon and others shut by fire set to reopen in Pacific Palisades mall

Fancy grocer Erewhon will return to Pacific Palisades in an entirely rebuilt store, as the neighborhood’s luxury mall, owned by developer Rick Caruso, undergoes renovations for a reopening next August.

Palisades Village has been closed since the Jan. 7 wildfire destroyed much of the neighborhood. The outdoor mall survived the blaze but needed to be refurbished to eliminate contaminants that the fire could have spread, Caruso said.

The developer is spending $60 million to bring back Palisades Village, removing and replacing drywall from stores and restaurants. Dirt from the outdoor areas is also being replaced.

Demolition is complete and the tenants’ spaces are now being restored, Caruso said.

“It was not a requirement to do that from a scientific standpoint,” he said. “But it was important to me to be able to tell guests that the property is safe and clean.”

Erewhon’s store was taken down to the studs and is being reconfigured with a larger outdoor seating area for dining and events.

When it opens its doors sometime next year, it will be the only grocer in the heart of the fire-ravaged neighborhood.

The announcement of Erewhon’s comeback marks a milestone in the recovery of Pacific Palisades and signals renewed investment in restoring essential neighborhood services and supporting the community’s long-term economic health, Caruso said.

A photograph of the exterior of Erewhon in Pacific Palisades in 2024.

(Kailyn Brown/Los Angeles Times)

“They are one of the sexiest supermarkets in the world now and they are in high demand,” he said. “Their committing to reopening is a big statement on the future of the Palisades and their belief that it’s going to be back stronger than ever.”

Caruso previously attributed the mall’s survival to the hard work of private firefighters and the fire-resistant materials used in the mall’s construction. The $200-million shopping and dining center opened in 2018 with a movie theater and a roster of upmarket tenants, including Erewhon.

“We’re honored to join the incredible effort underway at Palisades Village,” Erewhon Chief Executive Tony Antoci said in a statement. “Reopening is a meaningful way for us to contribute to the healing and renewal of this neighborhood.”

Erewhon has cultivated a following of shoppers who visit daily to grab a prepared meal or one of its celebrity-backed $20 smoothies.

The privately held company doesn’t share financial figures, but has said its all-day cafes occupy roughly 30% of its floor space and serve 100,000 customers each week.

Erewhon has also branched out beyond selling groceries.

Its fast-growing private-label line now includes Erewhon-branded apparel, bags, candles, nutritional supplements and bath and body products.

Erewhon will also open new stores in West Hollywood in February, in Glendale in May and at Caruso’s The Lakes at Thousand Oaks mall in July 2026.

About 90% of the tenants are expected to return to the mall when it reopens, Caruso said, including restaurants Angelini Ristorante & Bar and Hank’s. Local chef Nancy Silverton has agreed to move in with a new Italian steakhouse called Spacca Tutto.

In May, Pacific Palisades-based fashion designer Elyse Walker said she would reopen her eponymous store in Palisades Village after losing her 25-year flagship location on Antioch Street in the inferno.

Fashion designer Elyse Walker announced the reopening of her flagship store

“People who live in the Palisades don’t want to leave,” Walker said at the time. “It’s a magical place.”

Caruso carried on annual holiday traditions at Palisades Village this year, including the lighting of a 50-foot Christmas tree for hundreds of celebrants Dec. 5. On Sunday evening, leaders from the Chabad Jewish Community Center of Pacific Palisades gathered at the mall to light a towering menorah.

A total of 6,822 structures were destroyed in the Palisades fire, including more than 5,500 residences and 100 commercial businesses, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Caruso said he hopes the shopping center’s revival will inspire residents to return. His investment “shows my belief that the community is coming back,” he said. “Next year is going to be huge.”