WSJ What’s News - The Ad That Ended US-Canada Trade Talks

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

A.M. Edition for Oct. 24. President Trump has abruptly ended all trade negotiations with Canada, after Ontario released an ad featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about tariffs. Plus, the White House confirms Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will meet in South Korea next week. And WSJ’s Anvee Bhutani details the upcoming funding cliffs as the government shutdown begins to pinch American workers and families. Kate Bullivant hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Trump calls off all trade talks with Canada over a controversial Ronald Reagan ad. Plus, the White House confirms Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will meet next week. And the pressure is on for lawmakers as the continuing government shutdown looks to end paychecks for many federal workers. Some reps on both sides are working towards interim measures that could maybe help pay certain workers, but ultimately the leadership of both parties

are grounded in their positions and neither side is really willing to compromise. It's Friday, October 24th. I'm Kate Bullivant for the Wall Street Journal and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. President Trump says he's calling off trade talk. with Canada, pointing to a TV ad paid for by the Ontario government.

The advertisement features snippets of a voiceover of Ronald Reagan's radio address from Camp David in 1987 when he spoke about the negative impacts of tariffs on American businesses and workers. 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. Posting on social media, Trump called the ad fraudulent and fake and argued that it was designed to interfere with the courts as they weigh the legality of his global tariffs.

The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for more information. Ahead of Trump's comments late last night, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute said the ad misrepresented Reagan's address and that the Ontario government didn't ask for permission to use the audio. The foundation didn't clarify about what was inaccurate about the ad. And as our Daniel Bark explains, the threat to cut off negotiations comes just two weeks after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney visited Trump at the White House.

The two countries had been in discussions about how to reduce certain tariffs. In particular, the 50% levies Trump has placed on Canadian aluminum and steel. Since then, Ontario has lost auto sector jobs, as Stalantis and GM announced this month. They're pulling back from building cars in the province and shifting some of that production to the U.S., partly because of Trump's tariffs. And in response, Canada said yesterday it's cutting the number of vehicles Stalantis and GM can import into the country tariff-free. Here's Prime Minister Mark Carney speaking earlier this week. Many of our former strengths as a country, former strengths more particularly as, our economy. Strengths based on close ties to America have become our vulnerabilities. And as a result

of that, the jobs of workers and our industries most affected by the U.S. tariffs in autos and steel and lumber are under threat. Now at the same time, Ontario's leader Doug Ford has been pushing Canada to be more aggressive with the U.S. and its negotiations, saying he's willing to retaliate by curbing energy and mineral exports. The White House has announced that a hotly anticipated meeting between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will go ahead in Asia next week. Thursday's meeting potentially paves the way to de-escalate trade tensions between the world's two largest economies that have flared up as Beijing expanded curbs on exports

of rare earth minerals earlier this month. Markets reporter Chelsea Delaney is here. Chelsea, stocks seem to be buoyed by news of this meeting. Yes, markets are still very much paying attention to trade tensions. We've seen over the past couple of weeks when the tensions do start to escalate again, market sell off. And now that we do have this meeting confirmed, we've seen stocks rise. Investors are seeing this as good news because there are still a lot of outstanding trade

issues. The trade relationship between China and the U.S. remains a bit of a rollercoaster. we've seen Trump in the past couple of weeks threatening tariffs of 100% and then 155%. That's something that would be very important to investors if we do see, you know, a big escalation in this trade war because, you know, so far markets have been very resilient. The global economy, the U.S. economy, Asian economies have been very resilient to these trade tensions, but that's because there's a lot of exceptions. There's a lot of exceptions to the tariffs and things like that. So I think investors are definitely going to be watching this closely. So Chelsea, how much

much is at stake here when looking at the broader Asian economy? Yeah, there's obviously a lot at stake for these economies. We're talking about China, but also South Korea has been waiting for a trade deal to be finalized for months now. They thought they had a deal in July. It hasn't been signed. So that's another country that is really hopeful that this Trump tour through Southeast Asia will actually lead to some of these trade tensions easing further. So Asian economies have been doing better than expected, but the IMF warned in our recent report that we haven't felt the full blow of these U.S. tariffs yet. And there's a secondary impact as well where all of the volatility, the back and forth, the uncertainty around where the tariff rate will actually

settle. That actually has a negative impact as well on people and businesses and their willingness to invest and sentiment overall. We're exclusively reporting that the U.S. flew Air Force B-1 bombers near Venezuela yesterday. ramping up pressure on President Nicolas Maduro. According to a U.S. official and flight tracking data, two B-1 Lancers took off from an airbase in Texas and flew near the country, though they remained in international airspace. Journal correspondent Shelby Holiday says the flights signal a possible widening

of the U.S.'s against cartels and alleged drug traffickers in the region. They appear to be a show of force, assigned to Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro, that the U.S. can and will show up on Venezuela's doorstep. But the planes also appear to be conducting surveillance, since bombers are equipped with advanced sensors. As their name suggests, bombers also carry heavy bombs, and the planes could be used to hit narcotics facilities in South America if President Trump decides to carry out strikes on targets on land.

Officials tell the journal that the tempo of bomber missions could increase, and Venezuela is bracing for an attack. It comes just a week after B-52 bombers also flew near Venezuela, where the country's military held training exercises in September, with the Pentagon describing the flights as an attack demonstration. We should note that after the journal published this story, President Trump told reporters at the White House it was not accurate. Coming up, the biggest US companies are outperforming in this earning season,

and that's a welcome relief for investors anxious about the economy. More on that story. After the break. Strong corporate earnings are easing investors' anxieties about the health of the US economy. On Thursday, Intel became the latest company to top Wall Street's expectations, adding to a list of other upbeat reports in recent days

from the likes of Coca-Cola, 3M and General Motors. As markets reporter Sam Goldfarb explains, the positive results are particularly welcome after a series of bankruptcies and alleged fraud stoked concerns about quacks in the credit market. Put together that raised concerns that there could be growing weakness among maybe lower income consumers, maybe there was exposing excesses in the credit market where investors have been lending to freely in the past and maybe this could cause a turn in the market where investors then pulled back credit, which can be bad for the economy. He says corporate earnings are getting outside. attention because of the weeks-long government shutdown, which has halted the normal flow of data.

Some investors are thinking that these are just one-off events and that they wouldn't be getting nearly the same amount of tension if the government was producing the normal economic data that it provides. And that economic data in recent years sometimes causes concern, but very often it's sort of alleviated fears. Whether it'll alleviate fears or not, investors will get a delayed readout on monthly consumer inflation today after the Trump administration recalled some workers to finish a report that will allow the government to calculate Social Security payments. September's CPI print is due out at 8.30 a.m. Eastern. And as that government shutdown drags on, there are a number of looming funding cliffs

that could start to pinch more workers and families, as the journal's Anvi Bhutani explains. One of those is today, October 24th, when federal employees are expected to miss their first full paychecks. They already received partial paychecks earlier this month, but many workers are continuing to work without pay. Next week, we expect to see more paychecks being lost on Tuesday, as well as military personnel potentially losing pay later in the week. Further to that, the ACA subsidies issue will really start to become real for families when open enrollment opens on November 1st. Once the open enrollment period is there, millions of American shopping for their 2026 health care coverage will see how much their costs are rising by. Also, programs like SNAP and Head Start, which is a federal low-income preschool program, will also likely run out of funding by the end of this month. And Anvi says those funding cliffs could put pressure on lawmakers to end the shutdown now in its fourth week.

Republicans have repeatedly said that they're not going to vote for any kind of health care reform measures until the government's back in session. But Democrats are not willing to vote to open the government back up until health care negotiations are had. The other problem is both sides really see President Donald Trump as key to these negotiations to end the shutdown. However, Trump is leaving for Asia today and shifting his political spotlight overseas. You can find a link to a rundown of those funding deadlines in our show notes. And that's it for what's news for this Friday morning.

Today's show was produced by Daniel Bark. Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff. And I'm Kate Bullivand for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, have a great weekend and thanks for listening.