Trump says he’s canceling trade negotiations with Canada over anti-tariff ad

President Trump said that Canada “fraudulently used” an ad that included audio from a 1987 radio address by President Ronald Reagan in which he criticised tariffs.
President Donald Trump said late Thursday that he is cancelling “all trade negotiations” between the United States and Canada because of a Canadian TV ad that opposes U.S. tariffs on steel and cars, which are two major exports. This is another blow to relations with a major U.S. trading partner.

Trump said on social media that Canada “fraudulently used an advertisement” that included audio from a 1987 radio address by President Ronald Reagan in which he criticised tariffs as a short-sighted policy that would hurt American jobs.

The president quoted the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, which said that the ad, which aired last week in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, misrepresented Reagan’s speech by using “selective audio and video.” The organisation stated it was looking into its legal options in this case.
“High tariffs will always make other countries retaliate, which will start fierce trade wars.” Then the worst thing happened. Markets get smaller and fall apart. In the ad, Reagan says, “Businesses and industries shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs.”
The ad cuts and mixes parts of Reagan’s radio talk, putting some lines out of order, but all the quotes come from the original address, which shows that the audio is real.

Last week, Ontario’s ad, which cost roughly $53.5 million, came out in the U.S. In a post on social media, Trump said without giving any proof that the ad and Reagan’s comments against tariffs were fake and meant to “interfere with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court,” which is deciding whether most of the big tariffs that have been a part of Trump’s second term are legal.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford remarked before the ad came out, “Let’s take Ronald Reagan’s words and blast them to the American people.”

We couldn’t get in touch with the Reagan Foundation, Ford’s office, or Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s office right away for comment.

In his 1987 speech, Reagan tells the American people why he decided to slap limited tariffs on Japanese goods like computers and TVs earlier that year. He says that Japanese corporations were doing unfair business.
But he keeps emphasising that he didn’t want to do it, stating that tariffs or trade barriers “are steps that I am loath to take” and that he wants to “lift these trade restrictions as soon as evidence permits.”

Reagan also criticises the negative impact of trade barriers on the economy and says he doesn’t like tariffs because of what he’s been through.

Reagan says, “For those of us who lived through the Great Depression, the memory of the pain it caused is deep and searing.” “And today, a lot of economists and historians say that the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which was passed at that time, made the depression much worse and stopped the economy from recovering.”

The Washington Post said at the time that Reagan’s tariffs only affected less than half of one percent of Japanese sales in the US. Over the next few years, these levies were slowly withdrawn.

Trump has messed up relations between the U.S. and Canada since he came back to the White House. He has put high taxes on Canadian products and threatened to declare Canada the 51st state many times. In the past several weeks, Canadian officials have been in Washington to talk with their American counterparts about a trade deal that would cope with Trump’s tariffs.

Last week, Ontario Premier Ford said he was disappointed that Stellantis, a carmaker, decided to shift its SUV production base from Canada to the U.S. He blamed Trump for the move and called on Ottawa to impose duties in response.

Ford added at the time, “That guy, President Trump, he’s a real piece of work,” according to the Associated Press. “I’m sick and weary of rolling over. We have to fight back.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/10/24/trump-cancel-canada-trade-negotiations-reagan/

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