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President Donald Trump said he had ended trade talks with Canada out of anger with an anti-tariff advertising campaign launched by the province of Ontario, triggering a new commercial crisis with America’s northern neighbour.
The US president announced the move on Thursday night in a Truth Social post, complaining that ads aired in the US included the voice of Ronald Reagan, the former Republican president, “speaking negatively about tariffs”.
“TARIFFS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY, AND ECONOMY, OF THE USA. Based on their egregious behaviour, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED,” Trump wrote.
Trump’s move threatens to cause an abrupt rupture in his relationship with Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, who had steadied ties with the White House in recent months. However Ontario’s premier Doug Ford has been championing the ads.
“I’m a big Ronald Reagan fan,” Ford said last week, adding that he wanted to take the former president’s words on tariffs “and blast it to the American people”.
But the move triggered Trump’s fury. “They only did this to interfere with the decision of the Supreme Court, and other courts,” the US president said in the Truth Social post.
It referred to a case before America’s highest federal court on the legality of Trump’s levies on imports, based on emergency economic powers this year.
The breakdown in trade talks between the US and Canada comes ahead of Trump’s high-stakes trip to Asia, where he will attempt to defuse a flare-up in trade tensions with China during a planned meeting with Xi Jinping, the Chinese president.
This is a developing story
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