Fact-checking body claims Canadian ad was misleading about Reagan’s tariff warning

This article originally appeared on PolitiFact.

After the Canadian provincial government of Ontario issued an anti-tariff ad targeting US trade policy, President Donald Trump said the US was breaking off trade negotiations with its northern neighbour.

Read more: Trump threatens Canada with a 10% tariff increase for not withdrawing an important announcement sooner

In a post on Truth Social dated October 23, Trump referred to a statement issued by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute.

“The Ronald Reagan Foundation just announced that Canada fraudulently used a fake ad, showing Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about tariffs,” Trump wrote. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute is a non-profit organization based in Simi Valley, California, created by Reagan to advance his legacy and principles.

The Reagan Foundation said the Canadian ad — which featured Reagan’s April 25, 1987 radio address — used “selective audio and video” and “misrepresents the presidential radio address.”

The one-minute ad included some of Reagan’s statements out of chronological order. He also overlooked that Reagan recorded the speech after imposing tariffs on some Japanese products. Duty is a tax imposed on goods; A customs tariff is a type of duty imposed on imported or exported goods.

However, the overall message of the declaration does not skew Reagan’s views on tariffs. Reagan said he believed long-term tariffs would lead to trade wars and hurt Americans.

We asked the Reagan Foundation how the ad misrepresented Reagan’s address, but did not receive a response upon publication.

When we asked the White House what was fake in the ad, spokesman Kush Desai said: “Even the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute condemns Ontario’s misleading and selective editing of President Reagan’s statements.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said on October 14 that a $75 million ad buy was planned and would air on the major networks. On October 24 — after Trump called off trade talks with Canada — Ford said the ad would continue to air during the first two games of the World Series but would pause after that, “until trade talks can resume.”

Clips from Reagan’s address used in the ad

The ad shows Reagan giving the speech. He says in the ad:

“When someone says, ‘Let’s impose tariffs on foreign imports,’ it sounds like they are doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. Sometimes for a short time, that works, but only for a short time. But in the long run, such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer.

“High tariffs inevitably trigger retaliation by foreign countries and spark fierce trade wars. Then the worst happens: markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries close, and millions of people lose their jobs.

“Around the world, there is a growing realization that the path to prosperity for all nations lies in rejecting protectionist legislation and promoting fair and free competition. America’s jobs and growth are at stake.”

Some of the sentences in the ad are not in the same order that Reagan delivered them, but the rearrangement did not change their meaning. (The sentence, “But in the long run, such trade barriers harm every American worker and consumer,” actually occurred earlier in Reagan’s remarks. The ad was also edited with the word “but.” “And in a moment I will state the sound economic reasons for that: that such trade barriers harm every American worker and consumer in the long run,” Reagan said.)

He watches: Trump is considering a $10 billion bailout for farmers, as tariffs disrupt the market

In its amendment, the ad also deleted additional comments made by Reagan in the same headline. Reagan also said he recently imposed new tariffs on some Japanese products because Japan had not implemented a trade agreement on semiconductors. Reagan said he would discuss the trade disputes with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone at the White House the week after the speech.

Reagan framed the action against Japan as an unusual case of leveraging trade policies to counter specific behavior by a single trading partner on a single set of products.

In another part of the speech not quoted in the announcement, Reagan said the actions involving “Japanese semiconductors were a special case” to “deal with a specific problem, not to start a trade war.”

Reagan also said: “Now, imposing such tariffs or trade barriers and restrictions of any kind are steps I am loathe to take.”

The result of the trade war, he said, would be “more and more tariffs, higher and higher trade barriers, and less and less competition. So, soon, because of artificially high prices due to tariffs that support inefficiency and mismanagement, people stop buying.”

The ad did not capture additional history of the Reagan tariffs

Like the speech, Reagan’s overall trade record was often supportive of free trade, but sometimes subtle.

Reagan pushed for several international free trade agreements, including the 1988 US-Canada Free Trade Agreement, which later included Mexico and evolved into the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The Reagan administration launched “the most comprehensive set of negotiations to lower global trade barriers yet completed — the Uruguay Round, which ultimately created the World Trade Organization,” I. M. Distler, a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, told us in 2016; Distler died in 2025. Those negotiations continued under President George H. W. Bush and were reached and ratified by a large bipartisan majority under President Bill Clinton.

In a 1985 speech to business leaders, Reagan said: “Our trade policy rests firmly on the foundation of free and open markets — free trade.”

He also talked about the advantages and disadvantages of free trade. “I believe that if trade is unfair to everyone, then trade is free in name only,” he said. “I will not stand by and watch American companies fail because of unfair trade practices abroad. I will not stand by and watch American workers lose their jobs because other countries don’t play by the rules.”

Reagan sometimes leaned on public pressure for more protectionist measures, as he did with Japanese semiconductors.

In 1982, Reagan imposed quotas on sugar, causing prices to rise. His administration negotiated tougher provisions for textile and apparel imports, although not as much as the industry wanted. The administration set import quotas for machine tools from South Korea and imposed tariffs on Canadian lumber.

His most significant protectionist trade moves were a pair of “voluntary export restrictions” on steel and automobiles. These policies limited the number of units foreign producers could ship to the United States, giving domestic producers some breathing room from foreign competition until they could retool their businesses. (These policies also raised prices for American consumers and sometimes led to shortages of goods.)

Our rule

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute said Ontario’s declaration “distorts” Reagan’s 1987 speech on tariffs.

The ad edits some sentences from a 1987 speech, and in the speech omits that Reagan said he would impose tariffs on some Japanese products.

However, Reagan’s speech framed the actions against Japan as exceptions to his general support for free trade, a position he defended not only in the parts quoted in the Declaration but also in most parts of the speech.

We rate this statement Mostly False.