Ontario to stop running advertisement featuring voice of US President Ronald Reagan saying that trade tariffs were a bad idea.
Published On 25 Oct 2025
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The Canadian province of Ontario has said it will pull an anti-tariff advertisement featuring former United States President Ronald Reagan’s voice, which prompted current US leader Donald Trump to scrap all trade talks with Canada.
Trump announced on his Truth Social network on Thursday that he had “terminated” all negotiations with Canada over what he called the “fake” advertising campaign that he said misrepresented fellow Republican President Reagan.
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Less than 24 hours later, Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford said he was suspending the advertisement after talking to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney about the spiralling row with Washington.
“In speaking with Prime Minister Carney, Ontario will pause its US advertising campaign effective Monday so that trade talks can resume,” Ford said in a post on X.
Ford added, however, that he had told his team to keep airing the advertisement during two baseball World Series games this weekend, in which Canada’s Toronto Blue Jays will face the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The advertisement used quotes from a radio address on trade that Reagan delivered in 1987, in which he warned against ramifications that he said high tariffs on foreign imports could have on the US economy.
Reagan is heard in the advertisement saying that “high tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars”, a quote that matches a transcript of his speech on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library’s website.
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. I’ve directed my team to keep putting our…
— Doug Ford (@fordnation) October 24, 2025
The Ronald Reagan Foundation wrote on X on Thursday that the Ontario government had used “selective audio and video” and that it was reviewing its legal options.
An Al Jazeera analysis of the words used in the advertisement found that while it spliced together different parts of the 1987 speech by Reagan, it also appeared sincere to the meaning of Reagan’s message: that tariffs, if wielded as an economic weapon, must be used only sparingly and for a short time, or they can hurt Americans.
President Trump did not immediately react to the Ontario premier’s decision to pull the advertisement.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told reporters that Trump had made his “extreme displeasure” known and was expected to respond later to news of the advertisement’s impending removal.
A senior US official said that Trump would probably encounter Carney at a dinner on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in South Korea on Wednesday.
“They will likely see each other,” the official told the AFP news agency.
In his original social media post announcing the launch of the advertising campaign featuring Reagan’s voice, Ontario’s Ford says, “Using every tool we have, we’ll never stop making the case against American tariffs on Canada.”
It’s official: Ontario’s new advertising campaign in the U.S. has launched.
Using every tool we have, we’ll never stop making the case against American tariffs on Canada. The way to prosperity is by working together.
Watch our new ad. pic.twitter.com/SgIVC1cqMJ
— Doug Ford (@fordnation) October 16, 2025
