Trump ends trade negotiations with Canada after Reagan tariff ad

Donald Trump is the meme and social media master, but he does not like it very much when the tables are flipped.

To that point, Canada went after Trump with an ad that featured Ronald Reagan.

Trump was so upset over the trolling that he decided to cancel all trade negotiations with Canada.

The ad

Reagan did not like tariffs and once gave a long-winded speech against them, but the ad that was used to hit Trump was an edited version of that speech.

Before Reagan gave the speech, he actually hit Japan with additional tariffs because of what he believed were unfair trade practices, stating, “We had clear evidence that Japanese companies were engaging in unfair trade practices that violated an agreement between Japan and the United States. We expect our trading partners to live up to their agreements.”

Trump was furious over the ad, calling it “fake,” adding, “They fraudulently took a big buy ad saying that Ronald Reagan did not like Tariffs, when actually he LOVED TARIFFS FOR OUR COUNTRY, AND ITS NATIONAL SECURITY. Thank you to the Ronald Reagan Foundation for exposing this FRAUD.”

Trump is wrong… Ronald Reagan did not like tariffs, and his position on this is well-documented. It’s not even up for debate. They were short-term solutions to create leverage.

Trump Ends Agreements

After the ad was released, the Ronald Reagan Foundation announced that the footage was used without its permission. Trump stated, "The Ronald Reagan Foundation has just announced that Canada has fraudulently used an advertisement, which is FAKE, featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about Tariffs.

"The ad was for $75,000,000. They only did this to interfere with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, and other courts.”

Trump then announced, "Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED.”

I am about to say something that will not be popular, but here it goes. Trump does this type of thing to people all the time, so he needs to be a big boy and laugh it off rather than risk trade deals with major allies. To cancel a trade deal over an ad, to me, is utterly ridiculous.

Pausing the Ad

Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced on Friday that he will pause the ad from running so that trade talks “can resume.” There was a caveat, however, and that is that the ad is going to run during the first two games of the World Series, which will feature the Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Ford posted to X, “Our intention was always to initiate a conversation about the kind of economy that Americans want to build and the impact of tariffs on workers and businesses. We’ve achieved our goal, having reached U.S. audiences at the highest levels.”

If you missed the ad, it was cut to the part of the speech by Reagan where he stated, “When someone says, ‘Let’s impose tariffs on foreign imports,’ it looks like they’re doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes, for a short while, it works — but only for a short time. High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars.”

There is nothing about that that is fake. Those are Reagan’s words, just taken out of context of the full speech, but it does surmise his overall feeling. Reagan used them for short-term leverage, not as a long-term solution. Trump started out that way, but he now appears to think that tariffs could eliminate federal taxes and reduce our national debt, but I doubt that will ever come to fruition.