The government of Ontario, Canada, will air during the first two games of the World Series a TV ad that has infuriated U.S. President Donald Trump, the province’s Premier Doug Ford said Friday.
The ad uses edited clips of Republican former President Ronald Reagan in order to criticize Trump’s trade policy.
The ad so angered Trump that on Thursday he announced a halt to trade talks with Canada, one of America’s biggest trading partners.
Trump accused Canada’s government — which did not sponsor the ad — of what he called “egregious behavior” that was intended to “interfere with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, and other courts” on tariffs.
The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments next month in a case challenging many of Trump’s tariffs.
Game 1 of the World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays will be played Friday night, with Game 2 set for Saturday.
Ford said he had directed his team to continue airing the campaign, which features images of U.S. workers and households over a recording of a speech given by former President Ronald Reagan in 1987.
“Our intention was always to initiate a conversation about the kind of economy that Americans want to build and the impact of tariffs on workers and businesses,” Ford wrote in a post on X. “We’ve achieved our goal, having reached U.S. audiences at the highest levels.”
“I’ve directed my team to keep putting our message in front of Americans over the weekend so that we can air our commercial during the first two World Series games,” wrote Ford.
However, he added that following discussions with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, it was decided that Ontario “will pause its U.S. advertising campaign effective Monday so that trade talks can resume.”
What Ford did not say is that between Friday and Monday, tens of millions of people would likely see the ad.
This year’s World Series is poised to draw huge audiences.
Representatives for the White House and the Canadian Prime Minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Carney told reporters earlier Friday that his government was hoping to resume trade talks and “build on that progress when the Americans are ready to have those discussions.”
The ad has been airing in the U.S. nationally since at least Oct. 20, when it appeared during Game 7 of the American League Championship Series between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Seattle Mariners.
That game alone averaged 15.03 million viewers combined in the U.S. and Canada, The New York Times reported this week.
The Blue Jays’ victory vaulted them into the World Series for the first time since 1993 — ensuring that Canada would remain top of mind for millions of baseball viewers through at least next week.
The ad edited Reagan’s 1987 speech, using genuine lines but rearranging them.
The ad starts with Reagan saying, “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.”
“But over the long run, such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer,” he continues in the ad. “Then the worst happens, markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs.”
The former president was a staunch free trade advocate. But the purpose of this speech was to explain why — despite his strong dislike of tariffs — Reagan had recently imposed import duties on certain Japanese products.
Both U.S. and Canadian firms have been impacted by Trump’s tariffs on goods coming in over the northern border — though Canada has felt a much greater impact.
The Canadian economy had begun showing signs of weakness well before Trump took office.
But it is now “teetering on the brink of recession,” economists with Oxford Economics research group wrote in a note this month.
They pointed to the “troubling environment of persistent trade policy uncertainty, which is weighing heavily on sentiment, investment, and hiring.”
However, the Oxford experts believe the country’s economic picture would improve next year in the wake of USMCA Treaty renegotiations, which they said would likely result in the removal of most tariffs between the two nations.
