It seemed like a spectacularly bad idea. Ontario Premier Doug Ford, known as “Captain Canada” for his rambunctious defense of the country that used to be known in the U.S. as “our friendly neighbor to the north,” spent CAD$75 million on an anti-tariff ad. Using clips from a 1987 speech by Ronald Reagan expressing his dislike of tariffs, the ad ran on major television networks in the U.S., including during the first two games of the World Series.
Just before the ad was launched, Ford, displaying data showing how tariffs have driven up costs for American consumers, said: “These aren’t the kind of numbers I’d want to bring into the midterms.” Taunting Trump, however, is rarely a good idea.
For while poking the bear was popular among Canadians, it has been disastrous to trade talks between the two countries. Trump slapped a new 10 percent tariff on Canadian goods and declared that he “wouldn’t be meeting” with Prime Minister Mark Carney “for a while.” On Saturday, Carney said he had apologized to Trump for the ad, which was “not something I would have done.”
The U.S. ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, said that Canada “burned the bridges with America.”
