Ontario plans
to launch a multimillion-dollar
advertising campaign
against
United States tariffs
, targeted at Republican-held districts and using the words of late President
Ronald Reagan
.
The television spot is almost entirely made up of excerpts from an address Reagan gave in 1987 in which he defended the principles of free trade, and slammed tariffs as a policy that drives up prices and hurts US workers.
Ontario Premier
Doug Ford
played the ad before a lunchtime speech in Toronto on Tuesday.
“We’re going to launch a $75 million ad and we’re going to repeat that message at every Republican district there is,” said Ford, who has governed Canada’s most populous province since 2018. That’s equivalent to about US$53 million.
“We’re just going to speak the truth. You know, that ad, it’s not a nasty ad. It’s actually just very factual.”
Ontario is the heart of Canada’s steel and automotive industries and has been hurt badly by the Trump administration’s tariffs on both sectors. The unemployment rate in the province rose to 7.9 per cent in September — it was about seven per cent a year earlier — and it’s even higher in some cities where auto factories are large employers, such as Windsor and Oshawa.
Bloomberg.com
Ontario targets GOP with anti-tariff ad using old Reagan speech
2025-10-14 20:18:25
