The Wall Street Journal ripped into President Donald Trump for throwing a “tantrum” over an ad that used the words of Ronald Reagan to argue against the president’s tariffs.
The newspaper’s editorial board accused Trump of acting like a “king” when it comes to tariffs after he ended trade talks with Canada over the ad and imposed a 10 percent tariff on Canadian goods in retaliation.
The spot produced by the province of Ontario features about a minute of a five-minute Reagan gave in 1987 on tariffs and free trade.
“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,” Reagan says in the ad.
Trump falsely claimed on Truth Social that Canada “CHEATED” and was trying to influence a Supreme Court case involving his tariffs by “fraudulently” taking out “a big buy ad saying that Ronald Reagan did not like Tariffs, when actually he LOVED TARIFFS FOR OUR COUNTRY, AND ITS NATIONAL SECURITY.”
In a brutal fact check, though, the editorial board said that Trump was “wrong” about Reagan, who was a “free trader” who recognized tariffs for what they really are: a tax on Americans.
Trump has made sweeping tariffs—a type of import duty paid by American companies, with the costs typically passed on to consumers—his signature economic policy.
“We remember that speech well, and its purpose was to head off a protectionist surge in Congress,” the opinion editors wrote about the 1987 address.
“Reagan wanted to instruct the country about the damage from protectionism in the past, especially from the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 and how it contributed to the Great Depression,” they added.
The editorial board also called out the Reagan Foundation for “indulging” Trump by saying the Ontario ad took the former president’s words out of context.
“Anyone who reads the whole speech can see the Gipper favored free trade, with rare exceptions for political pragmatism and national security,” the Journal wrote.
Trump, on the other hand, wants tariffs to be the rule, not the exception.
“Reagan knew protectionist barriers over time breed complacency and lack of innovation,” the editorial board added. “Mr. Trump thinks he’s making American manufacturing great again, when he is really hurting U.S. manufacturers by burdening them with higher costs.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
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