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WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump slammed Canada for playing “dirty” Friday as a row over an advertisement featuring former leader Ronald Reagan that prompted Trump to scrap trade talks showed no sign of abating.
The Canadian province of Ontario said it would pull the offending anti-tariff ad on Monday so that negotiations could restart, after Trump alleged that the ad misrepresented the views of fellow Republican Reagan.
But Trump showed no sign of backing down, saying Ontario should not have let it air during the first two games this weekend of baseball’s World Series.
Adding extra spice to the row, the World Series features a Canadian team, the Toronto Blue Jays, facing a US team, the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Blue Jays thrashed the Dodgers 11-4 in the first game on Friday.
“Canada got caught cheating on a commercial, can you believe it?” Trump told reporters before heading on a trip to Asia.
“And I heard they were pulling the ad – I didn’t know they were putting it on a little bit more. They could have pulled it tonight,” Trump added.
After a reporter said the ad would be pulled on Monday, Trump replied: “That’s dirty play. But I can play dirtier than they can.”
Trump announced on his Truth Social network on Thursday that he had “terminated” all negotiations with Canada over what he called the “fake” ad campaign.
Less than 24 hours later, Ontario premier Doug Ford said he was suspending the ads after talking to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney about the spiraling row with Washington.
“In speaking with Prime Minister Carney, Ontario will pause its US advertising campaign effective Monday so that trade talks can resume,” Ford said in a post on X.
‘Crooked ad’
The Canadian ad used quotes from a radio address on trade that Reagan delivered in 1987, in which he warned against ramifications that he said high tariffs on foreign imports could have on the US economy.
It cited Reagan as saying that “high tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars,” a quote that matches a transcript of his speech on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library’s website.
The Ronald Reagan foundation wrote on X on Thursday that the Ontario government had used “selective audio and video” and that it was reviewing its legal options.
Trump said on Friday night that it was a “crooked ad,” adding that “they know Ronald Reagan loved tariffs.”
Trump and Carney are both set to be at a dinner on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in South Korea on Wednesday.
But Trump said he had no plans to meet Carney.
The latest twist in relations between the United States and Canada came just over two weeks after Carney visited Trump at the White House to seek a relaxation of stiff US tariffs.
On Friday, Carney had sought to calm the situation, saying that his country was ready to resume “progress” on trade talks “when the Americans are ready.”
Canada has “to focus on what we can control, and realize what we cannot control,” he added as he headed to Asia.
Trump’s global sectoral tariffs – particularly on steel, aluminum, and autos – have hit Canada hard, forcing job losses and squeezing businesses.
For now, the United States and Canada adhere to an existing North American trade deal called the USMCA, which ensures that roughly 85 percent of cross-border trade in both directions remains tariff-free.
But in a speech on Wednesday, Carney said that the United States has raised “its tariffs to levels last seen during the Great Depression.”
“Our economic strategy needs to change dramatically,” Carney added, saying the process “will take some sacrifices and some time.”

KUALA LUMPUR: Top economic officials from the US and China will face off in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday to try to avert an escalation of their trade war and ensure that a meeting happens next week between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The talks on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit will seek to find a way forward after Trump threatened new 100 percent tariffs on Chinese goods and other trade curbs starting on November 1, in retaliation for China’s vastly expanded export controls on rare earth magnets and minerals.
The recent actions, which also include an expanded US export blacklist that covers thousands more Chinese firms, have disrupted a delicate trade truce crafted by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng over four previous meetings since May.
The three officials on Saturday will try to pave the way for Trump and Xi to meet next Thursday at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea, a high-stakes conversation that could revolve around some interim relief on tariffs, technology controls and Chinese purchases of US soybeans.
First, He, Bessent and Greer must find a way to mitigate their dispute over China’s rare earths controls and US technology export curbs, said Josh Lipsky, international economics chair at the Atlantic Council in Washington.
“The meeting can’t happen without an agreement that they can return to this intermediate ceasefire that we’ve had over the summer,” Lipsky said, adding that the US wants to reverse and end China’s new rare earths controls.
“I’m not sure the Chinese can agree to that. It’s the primary leverage that they have,” Lipsky said.
The Malaysian government and the US and Chinese sides have provided very few details about the Kuala Lumpur meeting or any plans to brief the media about outcomes. The meeting’s venue was not confirmed until Chinese officials began arriving at the Merdeka 118 tower, the second-tallest building in the world.
Some of those announcements may fall to Trump, who is due to arrive in the Malaysian capital on Sunday.
“We won’t know if Beijing has successfully counterbalanced the US’s export controls with restrictions of their own or if they’ve induced a continuation of an escalatory spiral until Trump and Xi meet,” said Scott Kennedy, a China economics expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“If they make a deal, their gambit will have paid off. If there’s no deal, then everyone will need to prepare for things to get much nastier,” Kennedy said.
The world’s two largest economies are seeking to avoid a return of their tariff escalation to triple-digit levels on both sides that exploded in April when Trump imposed broad global tariffs. China also responded to Trump’s tariffs by cutting off rare earths supplies to US buyers.
Bessent and Greer’s first meeting with He in Geneva in May led to a 90-day truce, which brought down tariffs sharply to about 55 percent on the US side and 30 percent on the Chinese side and restarted the flow of magnets. The truce was extended in subsequent talks in London and Stockholm and was due to expire on November 10.
But the delicate truce frayed at the end of September, when the US Commerce Department vastly expanded a US export blacklist to automatically include firms more than 50 percent owned by companies already on the list, banning US exports to thousands more Chinese firms.
China struck back with the new global rare earth export controls on October 10, aiming to prevent their use in military systems by requiring export licenses for products using Chinese rare earths or rare earth refining, extraction or processing technology developed by Chinese firms.
Bessent and Greer blasted China’s move as a “global supply chain power grab” and vowed the US and its allies would not accept the restrictions. Reuters reported that the Trump administration is considering a plan to up the ante with curbs on a dizzying array of software-powered exports to China, from laptops to jet engines, according to sources familiar with the deliberations.
The Trump administration added to the tension on Friday by announcing a new tariff probe into China’s “apparent failure” to meet the terms of the 2020 US-China “Phase One” trade agreement that halted their trade war during Trump’s first term.
The move could create an additional legal authority for Trump to further increase tariffs on Chinese imports. China committed to major increases in purchases of US farm products, manufactured goods, energy and services in the 2020 deal, but the targets were never met.
That also could lead the US side to press Beijing to resume buying American soybeans after China bought none in September, heaping economic pain on farmers, a key Trump political constituency.