If multiple realities exist, there’s an alternative universe where the president of the United States simply did not respond to the ad campaign commissioned by Ontario’s government at all, where an ad citing Ronald Reagan’s support for free trade was simply beneath the White House’s notice. There might also be a universe where Trump responded to Ontario’s barbs by noting Canada’s own substantial history of using tariffs to support domestic industries, though that imagines an occupant of the White House with a deeper knowledge of another country’s history.
In this reality, the U.S. president responded to Ontario’s ad campaign by saying that “they cheated on a commercial” and announced via social media post that the U.S. was abandoning any further negotiations with Canada and, for added punishment, that he was imposing an additional 10 per cent tariff on Canadian goods. Various Trump lackeys and toadies, pressed to justify the unjustifiable, said that Canada had committed the unpardonable sin of trying to influence U.S. public opinion, and perhaps the opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court, something the treasury secretary called “propaganda” and a “psyop.”
(In all of these statements, Americans regularly conflated Ontario and Canadian policy and politicians; it is, in 2025, still too much to expect our neighbours to the south to grasp elementary-school-level facts about the government of their largest trading partner.)
The storm in Washington D.C. has, of course, caused turbulence here in Canada with various parties pointing fingers and assigning blame. Conservatives convinced that Mark Carney is playing his hand badly in negotiations see the breakdown as his fault; progressives eager to blame Doug Ford are piling on as well. Which isn’t to say that the partisan politics are entirely predictable: other conservative premiers have criticized Ford’s showboating, while Manitoba’s NDP Premier Wab Kinew sided with his Ontario counterpart this time. Perhaps most noteworthy are the slightest hints of daylight between Carney and Ford starting to emerge, after months of collaboration.
Let me offer my own assignment of blame: the person responsible for Donald Trump’s latest temper tantrum is Donald Trump and only Donald Trump. Imagining that Canada’s actions are anything other than a secondary input into the pudding that sits between the ears of the president is something closer to vanity than analysis. Were we to hold Donald Trump to the standard of conduct that we would hold literally any other national leader this would be obvious: the latest eruption of hostility from D.C. is indefensible and absolutely nothing from our side of the border justifies breaking off negotiations, much less threatening further economic pain.
(Insofar as Doug Ford bears any moral culpability for Trump’s actions, it’s only because by his own admission to a hot mic he wanted Trump to win the 2024 election — a deeply foolish thing to believe at the time.)
I am among those who questioned the wisdom of the ad buy when it was first announced, even as I acknowledged that it’s not like I had any better ideas. This is a President who started his second term by announcing tariffs against an island inhabited only by penguins, for God’s sake. Exactly what reasonable, reality-based path do Ford or Carney’s critics imagine was actually available to us? The Americans have made it clear that the only option they’re willing to entertain is our unconditional surrender — depending on the day, that may or may not include ending the Canadian experiment as a sovereign country. Anyone imagining some kind of good faith bargaining here is dreaming in technicolour.
Carney told reporters that we should take Trump at his word in explaining the breakdown in negotiations (implicitly putting at least some of the responsibility on Ford and this commercial). But Trump has used a lot of words in the last few days, including specifically accusing us of trying to sway the opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear oral arguments about the legality of Trump’s tariff powers on November 5th. Two lower courts have already found Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to violate the law.
We are, for once, blessed by the choices of our adversary. Trump has, I’m sure unwittingly, provided the justices of the Supreme Court with the perfect example for why his powers need to be constrained: how can a TV advertisement and the president’s bruised ego possibly be the kind of international economic emergency the IEEPA was intended to address? The obvious answer is it cannot, Trump’s actions are illegal, and America’s trading partners should be left in peace unless future tariffs are properly approved by Congress.
We are still only about 280 days into the second Trump administration and it’s all been, well, a lot. Ford’s ad buy might have been a mistake, but mistakes are going to happen. The wild, disproportionate reaction from the American side of things is grossly irrational and the responsibility of only one person: Donald Trump.
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