Stelco Workers Lose Jobs After CEO Backed Trump Tariffs
Up to 500 steelworkers in Hamilton and Nanticoke, Ontario, are being laid off by Stelco, the Canadian subsidiary of U.S. steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs.
Up to 500 steelworkers in Hamilton and Nanticoke, Ontario, are being laid off by Stelco, the Canadian subsidiary of U.S. steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs. The company says U.S. tariffs killed demand. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says the workers were betrayed. He singled out Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves, who had publicly cheered the very tariffs now cited as the reason for the cuts.
The timing and the math
Stelco announced the indefinite idling of its cold-rolled and coated operations at the Hamilton plant on September 28, 2026. Operations begin winding down October 9. The company’s internal memo, obtained by CBC News, said U.S. tariffs had driven demand for those products down by nearly 25 percent in the second quarter compared with the 2024 quarterly average, with a 10 percent drop in Canada alone.
The tariffs in question are the 50 percent levies President Donald Trump signed in June 2025 on certain Canadian steel and aluminum imports. They took full effect last year. Stelco says it can no longer sell galvanized steel into the U.S. because the business is uneconomic under the duties.
Carney’s government says it offered financial assistance to protect jobs. He declined to specify the size or conditions of the offer. Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy added that Stelco never applied for provincial tariff relief before idling the lines. The union estimates about 350 of the affected workers are in Hamilton.
The acquisition promise
The political heat comes from a 2024 deal. Cleveland-Cliffs bought Stelco for C$3.4 billion (about $2.4 billion) in November 2024. That deal included employment commitments. Union leaders and Carney say the company pledged to maintain the same number of unionized jobs at Stelco until 2029.
Carney threatened legal action on September 29, saying the federal government intends to pursue Cleveland-Cliffs “to the fullest extent of the law.” He pointed to binding employment obligations the company took on as a condition of the acquisition. The union backs that reading. Cleveland-Cliffs says it has every legal right to idle production and that the layoffs were necessary to ensure the company’s survival during the trade conflict.
Goncalves pushed back hard. In an interview with Global News, he said “no amount of money” would have avoided the slowdown and job loss, calling the decision purely market-driven. He also told The Globe and Mail that if a steel trade pact between Canada and the U.S. is reached soon, Cliffs intends to recall all the laid-off workers. He questioned the logic of Ottawa suing over the layoffs.
What is known and what is not
Here is what is documented. Stelco announced up to 500 layoffs tied to U.S. tariffs. Carney accused the U.S. owner of betraying Canadian workers. Goncalves had publicly championed Trump’s steel tariffs, calling the 50 percent duties “a necessary step” to protect U.S. steelmakers. The company says it offered some Hamilton employees jobs at the Lake Erie Works facility in Nanticoke, though not enough to fill the void.
Here is what remains unclear. Whether the layoffs are primarily due to the tariffs versus other business factors, including low steel prices in Canada that the company also cited. Whether the employment commitments from the 2024 acquisition legally bar the idling of specific lines while keeping others running. How much financial support Ottawa actually put on the table and whether Stelco formally declined it or never applied.
I have seen this pattern before. A company buys a competitor with promises attached. The market turns. The promises get tested. Lawyers read the fine print while workers wait. The difference this time is the public clash between a head of government and a CEO over the same policy one of them praised.
Markets do not care about the optics. They care about cash flow and contracts. If Cleveland-Cliffs believed access to the U.S. market was an underlying condition of the Stelco deal, as Goncalves said, then the tariff shock changes the math. If Ottawa’s employment guarantees were binding and specific, then the company may face real legal exposure. Both can be true at once. That is the uncomfortable part.
The workers in Hamilton know the uncomfortable part best. Their jobs are on hold indefinitely. The company says they will be called back if a trade deal arrives. The government says it will use all its powers to hold the company to its word. The tariffs remain in place. The cold mill in Hamilton goes quiet October 9.