The Current - How a tv ad torpedoed trade talks with Trump

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

The U.S. President Donald Trump announced it in all caps on Truth Social last night. "All trade negotiations with Canada are hereby terminated." Why? He says it’s the result of a television ad from Ontario's provincial government featuring the former president Ronald Reagan in 1987, speaking out against tariffs in an address on free trade. We talk to CBC’s Washington correspondent Mike Crawley about what this means for Canada — and the future of trade talks.

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Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Our officials, my colleagues, have been working with their American colleagues on detailed, constructive, negotiations, discussions, on specific transactions, specific sectors, steel, aluminum, and energy. And a lot of progress has been made. and we stand ready to pick up on that progress and build on that progress when the Americans are ready. That's Prime Minister Mark Carney responding to a big development overnight. It was an announcement in all caps. All trade negotiations with Canada are hereby terminated.

U.S. President Donald Trump wrote late last night in a post on truth social. The issue, he says, is an ad from Ontario's provincial government that sees former President Ronald Reagan in 1987's speaking out against tariffs and an address on free trade. Mike Crawley is a Washington correspondent for the CBC. He's in D.C. Mike, good morning. Good morning, Matt. What is this ad and why has it set off the U.S. president?

So the ad uses Ronald Reagan's own words, his voice, to send an anti-tariff message. It actually pulls from a 1987 radio address that Reagan did. This, you know, you might remember he's at the height of the original free trade agreement negotiations between Canada and the U.S. And Reagan was talking about the pressure to put tariffs on. And he says in it, high tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries, the triggering of fierce trade wars, markets shrink and collapse, millions of people lose their jobs. So Reagan makes very clear how he felt about tariffs at the time. And the Ontario government of Premier Doug Ford worked the words of this address into an ad. It shows visuals of ordinary American workers designed for the American market.

It's a $75 million ad campaign airing on lots of the sports networks and the news networks. And earlier this week, Donald Trump acknowledged that he'd seen it. He made mention of an anti-terror fact he'd seen from Canada, but he sort of brushed it off. This was on Tuesday. And then all of a sudden, last night, he cancels trade talks over it. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation says on social media that the ad misrepresented Reagan's address. Donald Trump has posted again this morning saying, again in caps, Canada cheated and got caught fraudulently took a big buy ad saying that Ronald Reagan did not like terrorists when he actually

loved terrorists for our country. What does the Ontario government said, if anything, about this? Yeah, I got a statement last night from a spokesperson for Premier Doug Ford, and they said, you know, that first of all, that they used this speech. There was no, there was nothing wrong with them using his speech because it's out there in the public domain. But they, They countered with Reagan's own words that he was very clear in his message against terrorists. And I got to say, it's the allegation that the ad takes his comments out of context somehow, it's it actually is completely bottles of mind because it's Reagan's words. It's very clear that he said this. And yeah, the ad moves a few of the sentences around in what he said.

but it absolutely doesn't change the meaning of what it was that he said. So Donald Trump posted this at 11 o'clock or 1115 last night, likes his late night television, perhaps saw the ad on TV, says he's going to pull the plug on negotiations that the sense was there perhaps could be some sort of deal, such as it was announced on maybe a couple of sectors at the upcoming summit on Asia Pacific trade in the next few weeks. How seriously are we taking this?

You know, the stuff that Canada has learned over the last nine months when it comes to Donald Trump is that he can do these sorts of things all of a sudden, out of the blue, and that you have to take it seriously. The exact reason why he's canceling the trade talks, you know, only he really knows. it's hard to go and say that anybody should be blaming the Ford government for this because, you know, who would have known that this would be the reaction? So is there actually something going on in the negotiations that have not been very going very well? He's feeling he wants to use a little bit of leverage against Canada. The talks have been very specifically focused, Matt, for the last couple of weeks in Washington And since Prime Minister Mark Carney visited Trump at the White House,

they had a very cordial seeming meeting, the talks have been focused on, specifically on steel, aluminum, and the energy sector. And just yesterday, the prime minister was saying that, you know, there had been some progress made on these very, you know, specific issues, and it was, you know, time to talk and not to retaliate. So this one does seem to have come seemingly out of the blue. And in the middle of the night. Mike Crawley, we'll leave it there.

Thank you very much. You're welcome that. Mike Crawley, Washington correspondent for the CBC. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.ca slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway.

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