'Self-inflicted wound:' Some Michiganders express frustration, fear toward Trump tariffs

Manufacturing jobs, rushing back to the American Rust Belt: It's an image U.S. President Donald Trump has often invoked defending his controversial trade war with the country's closest neighbours. 

But just across the border from Windsor, Ont., not everyone is feeling optimistic. 

"I'm beyond nervous," said Nick Sieja, an auto worker in Sterling Heights, Mich., a suburb of Detroit. "I'm nervous that I'll even have a job here at Stellantis with everything going on."

Trump started the week by slapping Canadian and Mexican imports with 25 per cent tariffs, citing fentanyl smuggling and immigration concerns, among others.

By mid-week, he announced the auto industry would receive a one-month reprieve after hearing from the Big Three automakers, who have criticized the tariffs. A day later, he announced a fuller rollback of the tariffs against both countries until early April. 

The move capped off a week of confusion and chaos for border cities like Windsor that rely heavily on the auto industry to fuel their economies. Industry experts and economists have warned that the tariffs could ravage the North American auto sector, which depends on a deeply integrated cross-border supply chain to function. 

"It's kind of like the doctor calling you and saying, 'I've got news for you, but you've got to wait a month to find out what it is'," said Michael Taylor, the mayor of Sterling Heights. "It doesn't really help much."

Taylor, a former Republican who has since come out against Trump, represents a city that's home to both Stellantis and Ford plants that employ thousands.

Opinion there on tariffs is split down party lines, he says. 

WATCH: Residents in Windsor, Ont., are bracing for possible tariffs. Just across the border, Americans are, too.

"There are people that are saying that we need to punish Canada for sending fentanyl into the United States, which is crazy to me," he said. "But there's also the other half of the people that recognize that these are really disastrous for their local economy."

One of those people is Ian Payne, a student studying statistics whose father works as an engineer at Ford. 

"It's silly, man. It's just not productive for our economy. Canada is the U.S.'s most important trading partner," he said from a barber shop in a Sterling Heights strip mall. "We're just so interconnected that it's just incredibly unproductive, especially living in an automotive centre like Detroit where things cross the border three, four times when you're trying to build a car.

"This is really dangerous to the auto industry on both sides of the border."