In the grand chess game of global trade, Canada just made a pawn sacrifice that’s as bold as it is boneheaded. With President Donald Trump pushing hard to protect American workers from the ravages of unfair trade deals, our northern neighbors—led by Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s provincial government—decided to drag President Ronald Reagan’s ghost into the fray.
Over the weekend, they dropped $75 million on a slick TV ad blitz, airing during everything from the World Series to prime-time slots in Republican strongholds, featuring deceptively edited clips of the Gipper himself warning that “trade barriers hurt every American worker.”
The not-so-subtle message was that Trump’s tariffs are un-Reaganite heresy, a betrayal of free-trade gospel that’ll tank jobs on both sides of the border.
Trump, in response, didn’t mince words. “Canada has fraudulently used an advertisement, which is FAKE, featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about Tariffs,” he fired off on Truth Social, before slamming the door on all trade negotiations and slapping an extra 10 percent tariff on Canadian imports.
Even the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation joined in, calling the ad a “misrepresentation” of his 1987 radio address—selective editing that twisted his words without permission.
Ford, a self-proclaimed “big Ronald Reagan fan,” backpedaled Friday, pausing the ads to “resume trade talks,” but the damage was done.
Ford’s actions were a classic globalist panic move: When you can’t win on facts, invoke a conservative icon to sow doubt.
But here’s the truth—and it’s time Republicans remember it: This ad isn’t just a cheap shot at Trump. It’s a profound misunderstanding, or worse, a deliberate distortion of what made Ronald Reagan the greatest president of the 20th century.
The Gipper wasn’t some neoconservative, ivory-tower free trader blindly chasing global harmony. No, Reagan was a man on a mission that was as simple as it was utterly American: Defeat the Soviet Union, end the threat of nuclear holocaust, and consign communism to the ash heap of history.
Reagan, like Trump, was motivated by a deep desire for peace. But not peace at any price. He wrote in his autobiography that he saw the standoff with the Soviet Union as two gunslingers whose hands were inching closer and closer to their pistols. It didn’t matter who fired first; no one would survive the subsequent fallout. Reagan needed to end not just the Cold War but the Soviet Union and the communist ideology it was exporting around the world.
Every policy, every handshake, every tough call flowed from that overriding mission.
To be clear, Reagan loved free trade in principle. In that 1987 address, he was railing against blanket protectionism that sparked trade wars, using the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 as his cautionary tale—a disaster that deepened the Great Depression by choking global commerce.
“High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars,” he warned, right before explaining why he’d just slapped 100% duties on Japanese semiconductors, laptops, and TVs for dumping cheap chips and breaking trade deals.
This wasn’t hypocrisy; it was pragmatism. Reagan imposed more trade barriers than any president since Hoover—over 25 major actions in eight years—because he knew fair trade requires teeth to enforce it.
When Japan played dirty, he hit back hard. When Europe subsidized Airbus to undercut Boeing, he negotiated fiercely. Free trade? Sure. But only if it’s fair—and only if it serves the greater crusade against communism and keeps America First.
That crusade was Reagan’s first priority, the lens through which he viewed the world. The Soviet Union wasn’t just an adversary. It was an existential threat to liberty, a godless empire bent on swallowing freedom whole. “We win, they lose,” he quipped in private. But publicly, he built an economic arsenal to back it up: tax cuts that supercharged American innovation, deregulation that unleashed entrepreneurs, and a defense buildup that bankrupted the Politburo.
Trade policy? It was a weapon in that war. By opening markets to allies and starving adversaries of dollars, Reagan strengthened the Free World’s backbone. He signed the Trade and Tariff Act of 1984 to expand “free and fair trade,” but he did it to empower American industries—telecom, high-tech, manufacturing—that could outcompete anyone.
“America does not fear free trade because the American people can produce and compete on a par with anybody in the world,” he declared.
At its core, these were America First policies that fortified our sovereignty, our workers, and our security.
Fast-forward to today, and what do we see? The “free trade” gospel peddled by Reagan’s era—NAFTA, the WTO, endless one-way deals—has morphed into a wrecking ball for Middle America. Manufacturing jobs have been gutted—more than five million lost since 2000, with entire communities in Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania reduced to fentanyl-fueled despair.
China’s not playing fair—they steal tech, dump steel, and laugh at our “rules-based order” while building a Belt and Road empire that echoes Soviet expansionism. Mexico is a revolving door for cartels and cheap labor that undercut U.S. wages.
If Reagan witnessed this—factories shuttered, families shattered, America’s industrial might siphoned to adversaries—he wouldn’t clutch his pearls over tariffs. He’d grab the phone, call Trump, and say, “Go get ’em, Don. Make ’em pay.”
Because at his core, Ronald Reagan put America first. Always. He stared down the Evil Empire not with diplomacy, but with resolve that prioritized our strength above all. Tariffs, in his hands, were scalpels for surgical strikes: targeted, temporary, and tied to reciprocity. Trump’s approach is Reagan 2.0, scaled up for a multipolar world where China plays the long game. The Gipper vetoed protectionist bills in Congress that would have handcuffed his negotiating power, but he’d applaud Trump for using tariffs as leverage—against Canada’s dairy cartels, China’s IP theft, and Europe’s subsidies.
“Nobody wants a trade war, but nobody wants to be a patsy either,” his chief of staff, Howard Baker, said back in ’87.
Sound familiar?
Canada’s ad isn’t just fraudulent in its editing—it’s fraudulent in its spirit. It paints Reagan as a globalist saint, ignoring the patriot who crushed illegal union strikes at home to save the air-traffic system and rebuilt the military to project power.
Ontario’s stunt was a Hail Mary from a province desperate to keep flooding our markets with subsidized lumber and auto parts while American steelworkers scrape by. Trump’s response—halting talks, hiking tariffs—isn’t pettiness, it’s principled pushback. It’s Reagan reminding us that Trade is an alliance, not appeasement.
So, to Doug Ford and the Canadian ad wizards: Nice try, eh? But if you’re invoking the Gipper, read the full script. He’d side with the man fighting to revive American manufacturing, not the bureaucrats begging for borderless bliss. It’s time we honor Reagan’s legacy not with cherry-picked soundbites, but with policies that echo his unbreakable rule: America First, always. Because in the end, that’s how we win—not just trade wars, but the peace that follows.
If he could see the hollowed-out factories of Middle America today—the ghost towns of Rust Belt manufacturing, the flood of opioids and fentanyl pouring across borders enabled by weak trade pacts—Ronald Reagan would be the first to cheer Trump’s tariffs as the bold medicine our nation needs.
Craig Shirley is a biographer of President Ronald Reagan and a presidential historian.
Read full article here