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- Doug Ford Gets Trump's Goat
This happened about ten days ago:
Ontario is spending $75 million to broadcast a new anti-tariff ad in the United States, aimed at Republican voters.
The advertisement uses audio of former U.S. president Ronald Reagan speaking in 1987 about tariffs, saying they do not work in the long term.
Premier Doug Ford says Reagan, his favourite American president, will be easily identifiable for Republicans and they will hear the message that tariffs will end up hurting Americans.
Here’s the ad:
Doug Ford is the conservative Premier of Ontario (basically, the governor), but grandpa watching TV in his PJs saw the ad and got pissed at the whole country:
Trump posts on Truth Social saying Canada “fraudulently” used a “FAKE” advertisement that featured Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about tariffs.
"TARIFFS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY, AND ECONOMY, OF THE U.S.A." Trump wrote. "Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED."
The Reagan Foundation (blegh) says Ford’s ad misrepresented Reagan, but Ford’s people say it’s an unedited excerpt of a speech. I mean, come on, tariffs are Trump’s little obsession — it’s pretty clear that Reagan was mostly a free trade guy.
Anyway, the bigger point here is that you just can’t cut a deal with Trump. Canadian PM Mark Carney was working diligently towards an agreement in the next few days, and Trump just took his toys and went home.
Carney is under pressure to do something about the US, and Canadians view this as existential — they took the 51st state rhetoric to heart. So, Carney has a lot of incentive to be tough. For example, he’s decreased the number of vehicles Stellantis and GM can export to the US without tariffs after those companies moved some production out of Canada.
Canada and Mexico rely on the US for trade, and both are run by smart politicians. Both Carney and Claudia Sheinbaum are working to diversify their economies away from over-reliance on US goods, and also moving to build more internal manufacturing and agricultural capacity (in the case of Mexico). It’s interesting that Carney has put himself front-and-center in negotiations, but Claudia has delegated it to her Minister of the Economy, Marcelo Ebrard. Trump’s latest arbitrary deadline of October 29 or else is approaching, and Ebrard says that he and the US are 90% done with negotiations. I’m sure Trump will blow them up somehow, Claudia knows this, and she’s wisely not hanging her political fortunes on making a deal with someone who’s never kept a deal in his life.
Trump has some leverage over Canada and Mexico, for now. Atrios posted this piece by Dean Baker that explains how the US has very little leverage over China. From what I can tell, they’ve effectively given up on negotiating and are going to instead bring the pain.
We just had a bad inflation report (it’s back to 3% per year). The tariff “strategy” or extended tantrum is a failure.
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