An ongoing truckers’ strike at the Canadian border is expected to have a negative impact on the U.S. supply chain, including the importation of vitally needed semiconductor chips, according to news sources.
Truck drivers, organizing what is being called a “Freedom Convoy,” began blocking a U.S.-Canada border crossing last week, protesting several Covid 19 mandates, but in particular a requirement that they must either be fully vaccinated or tested.
The blockade on the Ambassador Bridge, connecting Windsor, Ontario with Detroit, is causing “manufacturing disruptions that experts say could worsen,” notes the Detroit News.
The paper adds that more than a quarter of all goods traded between the U.S. and Canada travels across the Ambassador Bridge, carrying an array of supplies, including those all-important chips for automakers.
The Windsor Star has reported that the protest has expanded from opposing mandates for just cross-border truckers, to protesting all vaccine mandates, while some truckers have also included the increasing cost of fuel as a striking complaint.
The ongoing action has prompted Ford, General Motors, and Toyota to either curtail production or outright shut down some of their plants, the publication Transport Topics is reporting, noting that the action is “disrupting the flow of components and other products back and forth across the border.”
Meanwhile, the New York Times is reporting that a convoy-style truckers protest in the U.S., expressing sympathy for the Canadian drivers’ action, may soon see a similar demonstration stretching from California to Washington, D.C.
That report has been buttressed by a bulletin released by the Department of Homeland Security saying that the DHS has “received reports of truck drivers planning to potentially block roads in major metropolitan cities in the United States in protest of, among other things, vaccine mandates for truck drivers.”
The bulletin adds that the convoy, which could begin in earnest in mid-February, has the potential of picking up more truckers and trucks as it travels across the U.S.
In response, Chris Spear, chief executive officer of the American Trucking Association, has issued a statement declaring that the ATA “strongly opposes any protest activities that disrupt public safety and compromise the economic and national security of the United States.”
A coalition of business groups, which includes the Detroit and Ontario chambers of commerce, have now also issued a statement calling for an immediate end to the Canadian truckers’ strike, and adding: “We cannot allow any group to undermine the cross-border trade that supports families on both sides of the border.”
By Garry Boulard
