Trump says he is ending trade negotiations with Canada

President Donald Trump said he had ended trade talks with Canada in retaliation for 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 former Republican president Ronald Reagan “speaking negatively about tariffs”.

“Based on their egregious behaviour, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED,” Trump wrote.

“Canada has long cheated on Tariffs, charging our farmers as much as 400%,” he added on Friday. “Now they, and other countries, can’t take advantage of the U.S. any longer.”

Trump’s move threatens a rupture in his relationship with Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, who had steadied ties with the White House in recent months.

“We can’t control the trade policy of the United States; we recognise that that policy has fundamentally changed,” Carney told reporters in Ottawa on Friday.

He added that US and Canadian officials had made “a lot of progress” in “detailed, constructive negotiations” on sectors including steel, aluminium, and energy and was ready to “build on that progress when the Americans are ready to have those discussions”. 

Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, said on Friday that Canada had been “very difficult to negotiate with” and that Trump had become frustrated with the talks.

Carney flew to Washington this month to meet Trump in the White House in an effort to mend bilateral relations and rescue a C$1.3tn ($928bn) trading relationship.

Trump has imposed 35 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods excluded from the US, Mexico and Canada free trade agreement. The US president also put duties of up to 50 per cent on steel and aluminium as well as anti-dumping levies and tariffs on softwood lumber.

Ontario’s premier Doug Ford, an outspoken critic of Trump’s tariffs, has been championing the ads, which feature a radio address from Reagan in 1987, where he describes such levies as detrimental to the US economy in the long term.

“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”.

The advertisement has infuriated Trump. “Canada is trying to illegally influence the United States Supreme Court in one of the most important rulings in the history of our Country,” the US president said in the Truth Social post on Friday.

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 president is thin-skinned, we know this. But I thought the tone of the ads were civil,” said Flavio Volpe, the president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association and member of the Canada-US Relations Council.

Canada’s Ontario-based automotive industry, which has also been hit by tariffs, is facing closures and big job losses after Trump called for the repatriation of US carmakers.

Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said it was “another disappointing turn in the ongoing tariff battle”.

“This is not the news Canadian business owners were hoping to hear. Still, we need to keep our heads about us and work hard to get negotiations back on track,” he posted on X on Friday morning. 

The breakdown in trade talks between the US and Canada comes ahead of Trump’s trip to Asia, where he will attempt to defuse a flare-up in tensions with China during a planned meeting with President Xi Jinping.

On Wednesday night, Carney, during a televised address to the nation, unveiled plans to double Canadian exports to markets outside the US by 2035. “We won’t transform our economy easily or in a few months, it will take some sacrifices and it will take some time,” he said.

In a statement posted on X, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, said the Ontario ad “misrepresents” Reagan’s audio address, and complained that the province did not “seek nor receive permission” to use the remarks. The organisation added that it was “reviewing its legal options in this matter”.