Doug Ford is weaving quite a web of tariff turmoil
And he’s not sorry about it
The fallout from Premier Doug Ford’s anti-tariff commercial continues.
Last week, US President Donald Trump stated that he’d no longer discuss trade negotiations with Prime Minister Mark Carney, angered by Ford’s commissioned advertisement, which used a 1987 Ronald Reagan speech to denounce tariffs.
The next day, Trump announced an additional 10 per cent tariff on goods imported from Canada in retaliation because the province did not immediately pull the ad from American television networks.
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It seems Trump wasn’t the only guy who let the cheese slip off his cracker. (This is Ford’s parlance, obviously.)
As first reported by the Ottawa Sun, an “unpleasant exchange” ensued between US ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra and David Paterson, the province’s trade representative in Washington. Two Ontario government sources said Hoekstra hurled “insults and swore” over the ad.
Speaking to reporters today, Ford said Hoekstra should apologize. “It’s simple,” he said. “Bury the hatchet.”
On the subject of atonement, Ford does not seem remorseful about having derailed trade talks with his ad at a time when Carney and Trump seemed to be getting along. (Ford did claim that Carney and his chief of staff saw the ad before it aired. Carney had previously declined to say whether he had knowledge of the ad and reiterated that trade talks are happening at the federal level.)
“We generated a conversation that wasn’t happening,” said Ford today, explaining that media attention on tariffs has been significant since the ad went out. “I’ll never apologize for fighting for the hard-working people.”
Ford really had time to gab today, offering more psychoanalytic commentary than a Real Housewives confessional: “You know why President Trump is so upset right now?” he added. “Because it was effective. It woke up the whole country.”
Somehow we doubt that an apology is coming.
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
