Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks to journalists at a provincial and territorial leaders meeting in Ottawa in Jan., 2025. Ontario released an anti-tariff ad campaign which used archival footage of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan denouncing tariffs.Blair Gable/Reuters
The Cambridge Dictionary defines “pretext” as “a pretended reason for doing something that is used to hide the real reason.”
According to Dictionary.com, it is “something that is put forward to conceal a true purpose or object; an ostensible reason; excuse.” According to Merriam-Webster, it’s “a purpose or motive alleged or an appearance assumed in order to cloak the real intention or state of affairs.” Per the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, a pretext is “a false reason that you give for doing something, usually something bad, in order to hide the real reason.”
Trump announces 10% increase in tariffs on Canada for not pulling down Ontario ad sooner
Given the way things now work in Washington, “pretext” should be 2025’s Word of the Year. It’ll probably win next year, too.
Which brings us to U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement late Thursday night that he was abruptly suspending Canada-U.S. trade talks, and to his Saturday proclamation of an extra 10 per cent in tariffs. All because of an Ontario government TV ad.
If you believe that whopper, you must also buy Mr. Trump’s fairy tale about how a tsunami of Canadian fentanyl is flooding across the border. That was the legal pretext the Trump administration dreamed up earlier this year to justify launching its one-way trade war.
And that kid who had his lunch money stolen by the school bully? He had it coming.
The Government of Ontario released this TV ad which will be broadcast in the U.S. that uses a recording of Ronald Reagan to argue against tariffs.
Government of Ontario
The ad that is Mr. Trump’s excuse first aired on U.S. TV on Oct. 20, during Game 7 of the Toronto Blue Jays-Seattle Mariners series. It’s part of a $75-million advertising campaign launched on Oct. 14 by Ontario Premier Doug Ford (which, in response to Mr. Trump’s tantrum, will end prematurely).
Last Tuesday, the President calmly paid the commercial a backhanded compliment. “I saw an ad last night from Canada,” he told reporters. “If I was Canada, I’d take that same ad also.”
But two-and-a-half days later, he claimed to have suddenly become outraged, taking to social media to call the ad “fake” and writing that “based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED.”
If you want to blame Mr. Ford for this, you’re missing the target. If you want to blame Prime Minister Mark Carney, you’re missing the target.
What is publicly known about the state of trade negotiations is next to nothing, but Trump administration demands, or more precisely impositions, have visibly ramped up in recent months.
For example, Mr. Trump recently signed an executive order imposing 25-per-cent tariffs on heavy and medium trucks, motorcycles and buses. There are partial exemptions for Canadian vehicles to the extent that they use U.S. parts, but it’s still a new tariff wall. It’s the latest move going against the spirit and letter of more than three decades of Canada-U.S. free trade.
That’s the message of Ontario’s ad, which is 60 seconds clipped from a 1987 radio address by former president and Republican saint Ronald Reagan, laying out his opposition to tariffs and his love of free trade. The words are effectively a rebuke of the current president from one of the few predecessors he and his supporters still respect.
Mr. Trump has made it clear that unlike Mr. Reagan, he does not like free trade, that he sees exporting as winning and importing as losing, and that he dreams of forcing autos, steel and other industries to move from Canada to the United States.
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The President’s aspirational destination is one where Canadian car plants and other manufacturing facilities shift operations across the border – and in response, Canada doesn’t retaliate. He takes our lunch money, and we smile.
He’d also like us to say thank you, by committing to invest more in the U.S.
That’s what the Europeans, Japanese and South Koreans agreed to. But those economies are not tied to the U.S. to the same degree. They export and import to and from the U.S. In contrast, Americans and Canadians make things together, in integrated production chains.
Or at least that’s how it’s worked since the late 1980s. But that’s all fading fast. And if Mr. Trump follows through on his stated desires, it will be history.
What can Canada do? One option is to try to influence those who can influence the President. Who are they? American businesses and voters. They are the ultimate deciders – especially Republican and Republican-leaning voters, and especially in swing states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania.
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They put Mr. Trump in the White House and gave him control of Congress. If they’re not happy with his policies, he and the Republican Party have to listen. The Ontario ad’s celebrity spokesman is Saint Ronald Reagan because he can speak to Republican voters.
My only criticism is that the message may not be the right one. The ad is saying that protectionism is bad, the Trump plan to reindustrialize through tariffs is bad, and free trade is good. But the Americans the ad is talking to mostly no longer believe that.
A better message would be that while tariffs may sometimes be necessary – on China, for example – there’s no logic or benefit in a misdirected attack on America’s best friend, who also happens to be the No. 1 buyer of American exports. There is no upside here. There is only downside, for both sides. Everybody loses.