Reagan ad row: Canada's Carney says he apologized to Trump

[APEC Summit Takes Place In South Korea]
Ezra Acayan/Getty Images News

Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney said he apologized to Donald Trump for a TV advertisement that aired in Ontario, which featured Ronald Reagan warning of the dangers of tariffs.

"The president was offended by the act, or by the ad, rather," Carney told reporters at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation Summit in South Korea on Saturday. "It's not something I would have done - which is to put in place that advertisement - and so I apologized to him."

The ad, funded by the province of Ontario, used several clips of President Reagan warning that tariffs "hurt every American worker and consumer" over the long run.

"High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars," Reagan said, as featured in the ad.

After the ad aired, Trump ended trade talks with Canada and raised tariffs by an additional 10%. He alleged that the ad was created to interfere with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on a legal challenge to his tariffs.

Trump also claimed that the ad was dishonest and possibly AI-generated, although the clips in the ad were from Reagan's 1987 national radio address. "It was a false commercial," Trump said. "It was the exact opposite, Ronald Reagan loved tariffs."

Trump acknowledged Carney's apology on Friday, but said trade talks with Canada would not resume at this time.

While the ad was pulled on Monday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford defended it, saying it was meant "as an encouragement to embrace what has made our nations great."

"Together the U.S. and Canada can usher in a new century of shared economic prosperity by dropping tariffs, rejecting protectionism and promoting free and fair trade," he wrote [https://www.wsj.com/opinion/doug-ford-why-ontario-ran-the-reagan-ad-trade-canada-us-trump-b3277b66] in an op-ed for _The Wall Street Journal_.

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