How a one-minute ad threw Canada-U.S. trade talks into turmoil

Did the dustup over Ontario’s $75 million Ronald Reagan ad — the one telling Americans that even the Gipper believed that, “over the long run, such trade barriers (tariffs) hurt every American worker and consumer” — expose two truths and a lie?

Late Thursday, President Donald Trump took issue with the ad in a Truth Social post, expressing concern that it twisted Reagan’s legacy and undermined his own tariff policies.  

“The Ronald Reagan Foundation has just announced that Canada has fraudulently used an advertisement, which is FAKE, featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about Tariffs,” Trump wrote.  

A source close to the administration noted that the White House must have been in touch with the Foundation over the matter.

Trump’s post did more than criticize the ad — it also scuppered the U.S.-Canada trade talks.

“TARIFFS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY, AND ECONOMY, OF THE U.S.A. Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED.”

In one fell swoop, weeks of seemingly re-energized talks between the U.S. and Canadian trade teams came to a halt — negotiations that, according to the source, “were much further along than people knew.”

But some Canadian politicians, the source said, seem to be losing faith in the talks. “The message I got … was that ‘there’s all these asks, and what if we delivered all of them? What do we get in return?’”

“There’s a sense that, at times, it feels like a one-way street.”

Leaders from elsewhere in Canada had warned Ontario that the ad was likely to ruffle feathers. They pointed out that the Republican Party is nowhere near where it was when Reagan was president, the source said, and that a lot of people alive today cannot even remember him.

Trump purportedly derailed trade negotiations over Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s one-minute ad quoting another Republican. This has left Canadians wondering if the president’s response revealed a truth as to how serious he was about a long-lasting tariff deal.  

But it wasn’t just the ad that upset Trump. According to the source, the White House was also angered by Mark Carney threatening Stellantis with legal action after the automaker announced plans to move Jeep Compass production from Brampton, Ontario, to the U.S.

Ford’s confrontational approach toward Trump is popular with a lot of Canadians. “Given the anti-American sentiment in Ontario, I think that, electorally, the elbows-up approach works for him,” said the source. It may not help the trade talks or Canada’s relations with the U.S., but it lays bare the divide over the preferred leadership style for the conservatives.  

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, an ideological hardliner, is still smarting from his stunning loss to Carney last spring and now faces a leadership review in January. If he loses, the leadership style of the Conservatives could soon shift and look more like Ford’s aggressive pragmatism. That obviously would not bode well for a breakthrough in US-Canada talks.

And as for the lie? It’s not really a lie so much as a departure from standard diplomatic protocols. According to the source, Ambassador Kirsten Hillman has been party to the negotiations, but other diplomats have not. Instead, “Carney has a shadow government. He doesn’t seem to trust the diplomatic service, and he wants to work around them,” the source said.

“Carney is basically treating these negotiations like how he used to do mergers and acquisitions when he was a banker,” the source said. “He’s apparently brought in people who are trusted friends and allies … and he doesn’t want the negotiations going beyond a very small group of people.”

Ford announced on Friday that he would stop running the Reagan ad on Monday to allow for trade talks to resume.

But whether it’s diplomats or Carney’s buddies involved, nobody needs to pack their bags for more negotiations until Trump decides to lift the freeze, which means the future of Canada-U.S. trade negotiations is as uncertain as ever.

• Father Raymond J. de Souza: Trump has morphed into the anti-Reagan
• What Ontario's anti-tariff ad says vs. what Ronald Reagan said in his speech

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