Ontario premier says goal ‘achieved’ with US anti-tariff ad

Ontario Premier Doug Ford. (The Canadian Press/AP)

MONTREAL: The premier of Ontario on Monday defended his ad campaign attacking US tariffs — which prompted President Donald Trump to suspend trade talks — saying it successfully “sparked a conversation.”
“We have achieved our goal,” Doug Ford told reporters in Toronto, saying the advertisement campaign had attracted “over a billion impressions around the world” on social media.
“We generated a conversation that wasn’t happening in the US,” he said.
An infuriated Trump on Thursday broke off trade talks with Ottawa over the ad, which featured the voice of the late US president Ronald Reagan, a Republican party icon.
Ford later said that the ad campaign would be suspended, starting Monday, so trade talks could resume.
But Trump became angered further when it still aired on US television on Friday and Saturday nights during the first two games of baseball’s World Series.
The championship round pits Canada’s Toronto Blue Jays against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Over the weekend, Trump announced an additional 10-percent increase in tariffs on Canadian imports in retaliation for the ad campaign.
Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, has been hit hard by US tariffs, particularly in the automotive sector, where Canadian manufacturing is concentrated.
The ad used quotes from a radio address on trade that Reagan delivered in 1987, in which he warned against the ramifications that he said high tariffs on imports could have on the US economy.
Ford told reporters that Prime Minister Mark Carney and his chief of staff had both viewed the ad before it aired.
On Monday, Trump and Carney were both in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to attend meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations , but had no contact.
The US Republican leader indicated that he did not intend to meet with his Canadian counterpart “for a while.”