Canada seems to be caving to President Trump, pulling a TV ad featuring former President Ronald Reagan’s criticism of tariffs. The ad originally began airing in Ontario last week, thanks to Doug Ford, the province’s conservative premier.
The ad featured a clip of Reagan’s 1987 radio address in which the conservative icon argued that tariffs undermine economic prosperity and that they only serve to “hurt every American.”
The one-minute ad cuts portions of Reagan’s five-minute speech so that Reagan is saying several sentences in succession that were actually separate during the original address. As edited, Reagan says:
When someone says, ‘Let’s impose tariffs on foreign imports,’ it looks like they’re doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes, for a short while, it works—but only for a short time.
But over the long run such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer. High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars. Then the worst happens: Markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industry shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs. Throughout the world, there’s a growing realization that the way to prosperity for all nations is rejecting protectionist legislation and promoting fair and free competition. America’s jobs and growth are at stake.
While the clip is edited, Reagan certainly was not pro-tariff, and the ad Ford posted is not that far off from how the former president felt, much to the chagrin of Trump. Watch the ad in full here:
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