Reagan ad that infuriated Trump set to run during World Series
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Friday the anti-tariffs advertisement featuring former President Reagan, which angered President Trump, will air during the World Series before being paused Monday.
The ad led to Trump calling off trade negotiations between Canada and the United States.
“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,” Ford wrote in a post shared on the social platform X. “We’ve achieved our goal, having reached U.S. audiences at the highest levels.”
“I’ve directed my team to keep putting our message in front of Americans over the weekend so that we can air our commercial during the first two World Series games,” Ford continued. “In speaking with Prime Minister [Mark] Carney, Ontario will pause its U.S. advertising campaign effective Monday so that trade talks can resume.”
The Toronto Blue Jays are hosting the Los Angeles Dodgers for the first two games of the MLB World Series, scheduled for Friday and Saturday.
The ad shows spliced pieces of a speech Reagan gave in April 1987 about imposing tariffs on Japan.
“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,” Reagan says in the ad’s opening lines. “And sometimes for a short while it works — but only for a short time.”
“That over the long run such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer,” Reagan says next in the advertisement. In his actual speech, Reagan said this before the first lines used in the ad.
Once Trump was notified of the advertisement, he called off negotiations in a series of posts he shared on his platform Truth Social. The president even accused Canada of attempting to “illegally influence” a pending Supreme Court case regarding his sweeping use of tariffs.
“CANADA CHEATED AND GOT CAUGHT!!!” Trump posted to Truth Social on Friday morning, after ending trade negotiations the night before. “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.”
Trump in late July announced a 35 percent tariff on all goods from Canada, except for products covered under the 2020 U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.