An ad released by Canada’s largest province in the United States featuring former U.S. President Ronald Reagan has sparked new tensions between Washington and Ottawa, which already had a frosty relationship over President Donald Trump’s tariff policies.
In a post on Truth Social Thursday night, President Trump claimed that an ad featuring fellow Republican President Ronald Reagan talking negatively about tariffs as an economic policy is “fake.” He cited comments from the Ronald Reagan Foundation, which said the footage of the former president used in the commercial had been doctored, even though the comments in the ad were consistent with the president’s statements and the themes of his criticism of tariffs.
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President Trump also said the ad was aimed at influencing U.S. courts.
“In light of their egregious actions, all trade negotiations with Canada are hereby terminated,” Trump wrote.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced Friday that the province is pausing its advertising campaign to move forward with U.S.-Canada trade negotiations.
“Our intent has always been to start a conversation about the kind of economy Americans want to build and the impact tariffs will have on workers and businesses,” Ford said. “We reached the highest level of U.S. audiences and achieved our goals.”
Why is this ad causing tension between the US and Canada? Here’s what we know.
What ad did Ontario air?
On October 14, Ford announced that the state would spend C$75 million (US$54 million) to run anti-tariff ads on mainstream channels in the United States.
Ford has criticized President Trump’s tariff policies, and Ontario, known for its steel industry, has been hit hard by U.S. tariffs. Ontario is home to more than a third of Canada’s population and is home to the country’s largest city, Toronto.
On October 16, Ford posted an ad on its X account stating that Canada “will never stop advocating against U.S. tariffs.”
This one-minute ad features President Reagan’s remarks on freedom and fair trade from his April 1987 national address. In that speech, President Reagan spoke about the tariffs he had recently imposed on Japan, then a major economic rival, and argued that such tariffs were at best a short-term solution.
“When someone says, ‘Let’s put tariffs on foreign imports,’ it looks like they’re doing the patriotic thing of protecting American products and American jobs. And sometimes it works for a short period of time, but only for a short period of time,” President Reagan can be heard saying in the ad. His remarks are played over visuals such as the New York Stock Exchange, a farm, and a crane featuring the U.S. and Canadian flags.
“Over the long term, these trade barriers hurt all Americans, workers, and consumers,” President Reagan said.
“High tariffs will inevitably lead to foreign retaliation and a fierce trade war.…Markets will shrink and collapse, businesses and industries will close, and millions of people will lose their jobs.”
It’s official: Ontario’s new advertising campaign has launched in the United States.
We will never stop advocating for U.S. tariffs on Canada, using every means possible. The path to prosperity is through collaboration.
Check out our new ad. pic.twitter.com/SgIVC1cqMJ
— Doug Ford (@fordnation) October 16, 2025
According to Canadian media reports, Mr. Ford, who has described himself as a fan of President Ronald Reagan, said his office announced that anti-tariff ads will appear on U.S. platforms including Bloomberg and Fox News by the end of October. His office added that the ad targets U.S. Republican voters who understand the impact of tariffs by listening to the former president’s voice.
Are the ads fake?
But the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute, which promotes President Reagan’s legacy and principles, said in a post on social media platform X late Thursday that the Ontario ad was edited.
“This ad misrepresents the president’s radio address and the Ontario government did not seek or receive permission to use or edit the speech,” the institute said in the post, which also included a link to President Reagan’s original speech.
The institute did not explain specifically how the speech was misrepresented, but added that it was considering legal options to address the issue.
Al Jazeera reviewed the original text of the speech, which is posted on the website of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. It includes every statement heard in President Reagan’s radio address.
However, the comments in the ad do not appear in the same order as President Reagan’s speech. Instead, Ford’s team appears to have pieced together different parts of President Reagan’s speech to make their case stronger and flow better.
For example, in the ad, President Reagan can be heard saying about tariffs: “They may be effective temporarily, but only for short periods of time. In the long run, these trade barriers harm all Americans, workers, and consumers. High tariffs inevitably lead to foreign retaliation and a violent trade war. Then the worst happens: markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries close, and millions of people lose their jobs.”
In the actual speech, President Reagan made comments in the introduction to the speech about the long-term harm trade barriers would cause to the American people. Much later in his speech, he talked about how tariffs would only help “in the short term.” Comments on retaliatory measures taken by other countries came in another part of the speech.
And the passage about markets shrinking and millions of people losing their jobs is included in yet another part of the speech.
While President Reagan’s original comments appear to have been pieced together by Ontario’s premier’s team, the ad appears to be sincere to the thrust of President Reagan’s message: If tariffs are to be wielded as an economic weapon, they must be used sparingly and only for short periods of time, or they can harm the American people.
Some Canadian government officials defended the ad’s message on social media.
“The Ontario ad does not misrepresent President Reagan’s anti-tariff radio speech in any way. It is a verbatim reproduction of President Reagan’s radio speech, formatted for a one-minute ad,” Jason Kenney, a former Conservative cabinet member of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said in a social media post.
“They know full well that the Ontario ad accurately represents President Reagan’s opposition to tariffs and support for free trade,” it added, targeting the Reagan Foundation.
“However, it is clear that the foundation now has ruthless leadership that is easily intimidated by calls from the White House, and this is a further sign of Trump’s highly corrosive influence on the American conservative movement.”
Listen to President Reagan’s unedited remarks here: https://t.co/1gQUcbR4eZ pic.twitter.com/iqmjSuypp0
— Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute (@RonaldReagan) October 24, 2025
Why did President Trump cancel trade negotiations over advertising?
President Trump said the ad was a way for Canada to “attempt to interfere with decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court and other courts.”
After taking office in January, President Trump imposed tariffs on imports from many countries around the world, saying the United States was seeking to punish countries with trade deficits, increase U.S. government revenue and rebuild U.S. manufacturing.
The Trump administration initially imposed 25% tariffs on most Canadian products, excluding only products covered by the existing free trade agreement between Canada, the United States, and Mexico during President Trump’s first term.
And in August, President Trump raised tariffs on Canada to 35%, arguing that Ottawa was not doing enough to stop fentanyl from entering the United States. However, the Canadian government noted in July that “the amount of fentanyl that moves from Canada to the United States is negligible.” The government noted that data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows that starting in 2022, “approximately one-tenth of one percent of fentanyl seizures will result from entry into the United States from the northern U.S. border or Canada.”
In addition to tariffs, the US president has repeatedly threatened to annex Canada. He said in February that it would help Canadians if Canada became the 51st U.S. state. “People will pay far less in taxes than they currently pay. They will have full military protection,” he told reporters in Washington, D.C., as he signed the tariff memorandum.
Negotiations between Canada and the United States to secure a trade deal have continued for months. Ontario’s ad comes as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to rule on the legality of President Trump’s global tariff regime in November. The Court of Appeal had previously declared them illegal. If the Supreme Court rules that President Trump does not have the authority to implement such tariffs, the U.S. government may have to refund companies that have been paying the tariffs since they went into effect.
Beyond Canada, Chinese officials also shared President Reagan’s 1987 tariff speech on social media after President Trump announced sanctions against several countries in April.
What does this mean for future U.S.-Canada trade?
Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters Friday while boarding a flight to Asia that Canada remains open to resuming trade talks with the United States.
But Carney added that the decision to impose tariffs is ultimately up to the U.S. government.
“We cannot control U.S. trade policy, and we recognize that policy has fundamentally changed from the 1980s,” Carney said. “We have to focus on what we can control and recognize what we can’t control.”
Ford initially supported the ad, stating that the United States and Canada were allies and “President Reagan knew that our two countries were stronger together.” Later that day, he said he was suspending his campaign after speaking with Mr. Carney.
Ian Lesser, director of the German Marshall Fund’s Brussels office and a distinguished researcher, said Trump’s response to the ad is likely to be as much about his deeply personal approach to international policy as it is about trade policy.
“The relationship between the United States and Canada is extremely important for both sides in economic, security and people-to-people relations. The current friction and extremely negative atmosphere are unprecedented for a relationship of such structural importance,” he told Al Jazeera.
“There are policy differences on trade and regulatory issues, but it’s more and more about tougher attitudes and how that impacts Canadian public opinion,” he said, adding that Canadian public opinion is tilted very negatively toward the United States and Trump.
“This is creating an environment where discussions between Washington and Ottawa are particularly about domestic politics on the Canadian side.”
Additionally, this is not the first time that trade negotiations between Canada and the United States have stalled.
On June 27, after Canada announced it would impose a digital services tax (DST) on U.S. businesses, President Trump called the Canadian tax a “direct and blatant attack” and wrote on his Truth Social platform, “Based on this outrageous tax, we hereby end all discussions regarding trade with Canada, effective immediately.”
Canada’s Digital Services Tax Act will come into effect in June 2024, under which Canada may impose a 3% tax on digital services revenue that companies generate from Canadian users in excess of C$20 million (US$14.6 million) in a calendar year.
Just two days after President Trump’s announcement, Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said in a statement that Ottawa would cancel DST for U.S. companies to aid trade negotiations with Washington.
Canada is the United States’ top trading partner, with more than 77 percent of Canada’s exports going to the United States. According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, U.S. trade with Canada reached $909.1 billion in 2024.
However, U.S. tariffs have particularly affected Canada’s steel and aluminum sectors.
“In the areas where we compete, we need to reach agreements that work,” Carney told reporters after meeting with President Trump at the White House this month, aiming to achieve a trade deal and lower tariffs on Canadian products.
Such an agreement now seems remote.
