Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says that he apologized to US President Donald Trump over an anti-tariff advertisement featuring former US President Ronald Reagan.
The minute-long ad has disrupted negotiations between the two countries. It featured a series of clips from Reagan’s speech from a 1987 radio address in which he said that tariffs “hurt every American worker and consumer” and trigger “fierce trade wars” and unemployment. According to the Washington Post, while the address was edited, the excerpts don’t appear altered or taken out of context.
In response, Trump halted trade talks with Canada and threatened an additional 10% tariff on Canadian imports. The Trump administration explained that the ad misrepresented Reagan’s views and attempted to influence the US Supreme Court decision on Trump’s tariff policy.
Carney has told reporters at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in South Korea that he had apologized to the president and added that “the president was offended”.
“I’m the one who’s responsible, in my role as prime minister, for our relationship with the president of the United States, and the federal government is responsible for the foreign relationship with the US government,” Carney said.
“So, things happen – we take the good with the bad – and I apologised.”
Carney added that the ad was "not something I would have done,” and that he had advised Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario and an outspoken critic of Trump's tariff policy responsible for the ad, not to release it.
The ad gathered quite an audience as it was shown during the first two baseball World Series games between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Ford later took it to X to specify that the ad had achieved 11.4 billion views in seven days. On Friday, he said that he would pause the campaign to allow the trade talks to continue.
Ontario‘s ad was intended to initiate a conversation about the impact of tariffs on American workers. In seven days, it achieved 11.4 billion views, raising awareness of President Reagan’s warnings against protectionism. pic.twitter.com/O2n1Gu6D2I
undefined Doug Ford (@fordnation) October 27, 2025
Trump acknowledged Carney's apology on Friday, telling the reporters: “I have a very good relationship, I like him a lot – but you know, what they did was wrong.”
Yet for the time being, Trump said trade talks between the two countries would not resume. Carney, however, stated that he is ready to start negotiations once the US is.
Despite the advertisement not being fake, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute took it to social media to say the ad campaign used "selective audio and video" and misrepresented Reagan's address. The institute added that it did not give permission to use or edit the remarks, and said it was looking into legal options following the event.
Some Canadian officials, like Jason Kenney, a Canadian politician and former Premier of Alberta, clapped back at the allegations.
“This is just embarrassing. The Ontario ad does not misrepresent President Reagan’s anti-tariff radio address in any respect whatsoever. It is a direct replay of his radio address, formatted for a one minute ad," Kenney posted on X.
He added that “the Reagan Foundation does not own copyright on the public domain statements of a President uttered 40 years ago, and disseminated by the White House.”
In June, Trump suspended trade talks with Canada over its new digital services tax on American tech companies. But shortly after, Canada’s finance ministry announced that the government was rescinding the digital services tax in order to complete trade negotiations with the US.
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