Mark Carney apologises to Trump for Ronald Reagan anti-tariff ad, Doug Ford is not sorry

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Saturday that he had apologised to US President Donald Trump over the anti-tariff ad, which featured a clip of Ronald Reagan.

The ad was run by Ontario Premier Doug Ford in response to Trump imposing a 35 per cent tariff on Canadian goods.

The ad featured clips from former US leader Ronald Reagan’s 1987 radio address about free trade. 

Doug Ford has stood by his decision to run the advertisement.

Carney, however, had said that the ads had disrupted his plans to renegotiate the tariffs with Trump.

Following the ad, the US president said that he would hike the tariffs on Canadian goods by 10 per cent and said that he had no plans to meet with Carny.

“I did apologise to the President. The President was offended,” Carney told journalists in Gyeongju, South Korea, adding that trade talks would restart when the US is “ready”.

Carney also said that he had viewed the ad before it was aired and had asked the Ontario premier not to go ahead with it.

Trump had said on Friday that the US and Canada will not be restarting trade talks even though Carney had apologised.

“I like him a lot, but what they did was wrong,” he said. “He apologised for what they did with the commercial because it was a false commercial.”

Doug Ford, meanwhile, had demanded an apology from the US ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, after his exchange with Ontario’s trade representative David Paterson over the ad, BBC reported.

The exchange was called an ‘expletive-laced tirade’ by CBS news. Sources who witnessed the encounter said that Hoekstra used the F-word and named Ford in the exchange.

The Ontario premier called the remarks “absolutely unacceptable” and “unbecoming of an ambassador” and said, “Pete, you gotta call Dave up and apologise. It’s simple,”

“You’re ticked off, but call the guy up because you’re a good guy, and Dave’s my champion.”

The ads have continued running. Ford said that he went ahead with the ad to achieve a ‘good impact’ with American audiences and help secure a fair trade deal for Ontario. He also said that the ad got over 1 billion impressions and was seen by a global audience. “What do they expect me to do? Sit back and roll over like every other person in the world,” he said.