Trump to increase tariffs on Canada by 10 percent over Reagan ad

US president says Ontario government’s anti-tariff ad featuring Ronald Reagan needed to be taken down ‘immediately’.

United States President Donald Trump has announced an additional 10 percent levy on Canadian goods over a contentious anti-tariff advertisement featuring former US leader Ronald Reagan.

The announcement on Saturday came two days after Trump terminated all trade talks with Canada over what he called a “fake” campaign run by the Canadian province of Ontario.

The advertisement features a video of Reagan, a Republican icon, saying that tariffs cause trade wars and economic disaster.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said on Friday that he would pull the advertisement after the weekend so that trade talks could resume.

The advertisement ran on Friday night, during the broadcast for Game 1 of Major League Baseball’s World Series, in which the Toronto Blue Jays are facing off against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

“Their Advertisement was to be taken down, IMMEDIATELY, but they let it run last night during the World Series, knowing that it was a FRAUD,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform as he flew on board Air Force One to Malaysia.

“Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now.”

The Canadian government did not immediately comment on Trump’s announcement of additional tariffs on Saturday.

It was not clear what goods would be affected by Trump’s newly announced tariffs. The majority of Canadian exports to the US are exempt from tariffs because of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which was signed during Trump’s first term.

In August, the Trump administration imposed a 35 percent tariff on Canadian goods not covered by the USMCA. But Canada’s economy has suffered from Trump’s sector tariffs of 50 percent imposed this year on steel and aluminium from all countries.

The advertisement run by the Ontario government features a 1980s speech by Reagan in which the former Republican leader had warned against the ramifications that high tariffs on foreign imports could have on the US economy.

Al Jazeera reviewed the text of the original speech and found that it contained all the statements used in the Ontario commercial. However, they appeared to be in a different order.

Washington suspended trade talks with Ottawa this week over the advertisement, accusing the Ontario provincial government of misrepresenting Reagan’s position and seeking to influence a looming US Supreme Court ruling on Trump’s tariff policy.

Ford, the Ontario premier, said on Friday that he was pausing the campaign after consulting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

“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 US audiences at the highest levels,” Ford wrote on X.

“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.”

It is unclear whether the advertisement will run again as planned during the second World Series game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers, set to begin at 8pm local time in Toronto on Saturday (00:00 GMT on Sunday).

Carney said on Friday that Canada stood ready to resume trade talks with the US.

Trump and Carney will both be at the Association of Southeast-Asian Nations summit in Malaysia, but the US president told reporters on Air Force One that he has no plans to meet with the Canadian leader.