Ontario Premier Doug Ford said on Monday that his government's anti-tariff ad 'was the most successful ad in the history of North America.'Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Our lovable protagonist, Captain Canada, is at it again. Like our very own Inspector Gadget, who tries to foil Dr. Claw but invariably ends up tangling himself in his helicopter hat, Ontario Premier Doug Ford spent millions of dollars to try to persuade Americans to turn on their President’s tariffs. But somehow, Canada ended up with a 10-per-cent hike on existing tariffs. Whoops. These damn gadgets never seem to work right.
Was it actually Mr. Ford’s anti-tariff ads, which featured president Ronald Reagan decrying “protectionist legislation,” that compelled U.S. President Donald Trump to cancel all trade negotiations with Canada? Prime Minister Mark Carney seems to think so. “I suggest you take the President at his word,” he said to reporters Monday.
Sources told CBC News that Mr. Ford’s actions and rhetoric has indeed been an ongoing irritant for the Trump administration for the last several months. Or maybe the catalyst was actually the federal government’s decision to no longer exempt certain vehicles produced by Stellantis and GM from retaliatory tariffs? Or maybe Mr. Trump is actually following his own Art of the Deal playbook, which prescribes calling off negotiations at critical junctions to keep negotiating partners on their toes? Maybe he’s mad the Blue Jays made the World Series? Or that his Diet Coke has been flat lately? Or maybe a bug landed on his steak, and so, he decided to no longer discuss trade with his neighbour and top ally.
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No one knows. Mr. Trump himself may not know. And indeed, it could be that the President was not interested in a deal in the first place. Mr. Ford himself suggested that Mr. Trump was never a partner in good-faith negotiations: “It’s not about the ad,” Mr. Ford said. “It’s about finding every excuse in the world not to get a deal.”
If that is indeed the case, however, and Mr. Trump was always going to walk away from the table, it raises an important question: Why did Ontario spend millions of dollars on an ad that the Premier now acknowledges was never actually going to make a difference?
The answer, as everyone who understands Mr. Ford’s ethos knows, is that Captain Canada likes the feeling of air under his cape, even if he eventually gets tangled in it and ends up plummeting to the ground.
Canada tried appealing directly to Americans through advertising back in March, when the federal government launched a series of billboards in mostly red states that told Americans that “tariffs are a tax on your grocery bill.” But the move was more defensible then; Mr. Carney had just barely become Prime Minister after winning the leadership race, and the fate of the federal government, and by extension its trade negotiating team, was still a question with an anticipated election call just weeks away.
Mr. Trump’s resolve on tariffs had not really been tested against potential pushback from Republican lawmakers and the public writ large, so there was some logic in trying to persuade the Americans to rebel against Mr. Trump’s tariffs.
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But six months later, we know that there is virtually no pushback on tariffs from obsequious Republican lawmakers, and we know that Mr. Trump doesn’t really care that the majority of Americans aren’t onside. So then, what was the point of an Ontario-produced ad telling Americans what they already know – to persuade a President who, by the Premier’s own admission, was going to do whatever he wanted anyway? It was to make us feel good: to make us feel like we’re poking Mr. Trump in the eye, while he threatens to clobber our economy with a sledgehammer.
Mr. Ford boasted on Monday that his ad “was the most successful ad in the history of North America, not just here,” because it had “over one billion impressions.” Advertising executives might have something to say about the success of an ad that results in a net negative – a tariff hike – instead of some material gain. Indeed, in the marketing world, an ad that results in, say, a consumer boycott or even a lawsuit isn’t generally viewed as a success, even if it gets a billion views.
Mr. Ford has not disclosed the final cost of his advertising campaign (which, as reported by Global News, was produced by a firm with ties to the Ontario PC Party) though it was originally projected to cost $75-million. Even if it ends up costing half that, it would be millions of dollars spent to satiate our desire to stick it to Americans, to – at best – no material effect. Therapy is much cheaper than that. Whether it was actually the impetus for Mr. Trump calling off talks or not, these ads sucked up money that should have been kept in Ontario, and better spent virtually anywhere else.