President Trump announced on Saturday afternoon that he will increase tariffs on Canada by 10% in response to an anti-tariff advertisement by the province of Ontario that featured Ronald Reagan, and which is roiling one of the world’s biggest bilateral trade relationships.
Trump said the ad campaign misrepresented Reagan’s speech on tariffs, and aimed at interfering with the upcoming Supreme Court hearing on his administration’s global tariffs.
“Canada was caught, red-handed, putting up a fraudulent advertisement on Ronald Reagan’s Speech on Tariffs,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“The Reagan Foundation said that they, ‘created an ad campaign using selective audio and video of President Ronald Reagan. The ad misrepresents the Presidential Radio Address,’ and ‘did not seek nor receive permission to use and edit the remarks. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute is reviewing its legal options in this matter.’”
“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. 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 US president didn’t specify the scope of his new measure. While Canada faces a US base tariff of 35%, the rate doesn’t apply to most Canadian goods because of an exemption for products and shipments made within the rules of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Steel and aluminum products don’t have that waiver — and Canadian-made cars and trucks are only partially eligible for exemption from Trump’s 25% tariffs on most foreign autos.
“Tariffs at any level remain a tax on America first, then North American competitiveness as a whole,” Candace Laing, head of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Ottawa, said in a statement. “We hope this threat of escalation can be resolved through diplomatic channels and further negotiation.”
Canada PM Mark Carney has been engaged in talks with the US to lower the levies and Ontario Premier Doug Ford has pledged to pause the Ontario-funded ads in the US on Monday after speaking to Carney in hopes that the talks could resume. After Trump first halted the negotiations, Carney said Ottawa was prepared to resume discussions “when the Americans are ready,” and said that the two sides had been making progress on steel, aluminum and energy.
In contrast, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told Fox News on Friday that negotiations with Canada have “not been going well” and Trump is “very frustrated.”
Trump said the ads appear to be timed to influence a US Supreme Court case challenging the legality of many of his global tariffs, threatening a pillar of his reelection campaign and subsequent economic agenda. The court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case on Nov. 5. Trump said SCOTUS would create a disaster if it overturns his country-based tariffs, including forcing the US government to refund companies billions of dollars in duties.
Trump said Thursday he’d end all talks with Canada because of the ad, which used excerpts from a 1987 Reagan speech defending free trade and slamming tariffs as an outdated notion that stifles innovation, drives up prices and hurts US workers. When Reagan delivered the radio address, he had just placed “select” tariffs on Japanese electronics for what he considered unfair trade practices.
The Reagan quotations were edited together from different parts of his speech, prompting the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute to complain that the ad misrepresented the full address. The foundation said it’s reviewing its legal options.
The Government of Ontario just spent $75 million on a pro-trade/anti-tariff ad starring… Ronald Reagan. pic.twitter.com/uD5wJgZEzv
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) October 15, 2025
Trump made his latest announcement while en route to a three-country trip to Asia that includes stops at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Malaysia and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea. Asked if he had any plans to meet Carney during the two summits, the US president said as he began his trip that “I don’t have any intention of it, no.”
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