OCTOBER 27, 2025
President Donald Trump greets Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney during a summit on Gaza in Sharm el-Sheikh on October 13.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said his country stood ready to restart trade talks with the United States after President Donald Trump said he would not meet with him for a long time amid a spat over an anti-tariff advertisement.
Trump abruptly scrapped the negotiations in response to an ad against tariffs that featured clips of former President Ronald Reagan run by Ontario’s provincial government, led by Premier Doug Ford. Trump also said he would add 10 percent to the tariffs on Canada.
Carney, speaking in Malaysia, said the U.S. and Canada “made considerable progress” in the talks until Ontario’s ad campaign.
“From the perspective of the federal government, which I’m responsible, we stand ready to pick up on those discussions when the United States wishes to pick up on those discussions,” Carney said.
Canada-US Trade War
Canada is the U.S.’s second-largest trading partner after Mexico. More than three-quarters of Canadian exports go to the U.S., and nearly $3.6 billion Canadian ($2.7 billion U.S.) worth of goods and services cross the border daily.
But Trump triggered a trade war with Canada, which he accused of benefiting from an imbalanced and unfair trading relationship, a characterization Ottawa rejects.
Both sides have since exchanged tariffs and other measures, targeting steel and aluminum, lumber, autos, and more, but were in negotiations on a range of trade-related issues.
Doug Ford Tariffs Ad ‘Dirty Pool’
Ford said Friday that he would pull the ad campaign on Monday, a two-day delay that frustrated Trump, who called it “very late”.
“That’s dirty pool and you can’t do that,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he traveled to Japan on Monday, referring to what he says was a false representation of Reagan’s views on tariffs.
Ford said the campaign, which included television spots set to air during the first two World Series games between the Toronto Blue Jays and Los Angeles Dodgers, was intended to spark discussion about the impact of tariffs on workers and businesses.
He said the decision to suspend the ads, made in consultation with Carney, would allow trade talks with the White House to resume.
“Canada and the U.S. are neighbors, friends and allies,” Ford said in a post on X. “We’re so much stronger when we work together.”
Carney-Trump Meeting Not Happening
Trump was asked if he planned to meet with Carney at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit (APEC) in South Korea this week.
“I don’t want to meet with him,” Trump replied. “No, I’m not going to be meeting with them for a while. No, I’m very happy with the deal we have right now with Canada. We’re going to let it ride.”
At the press conference in Malaysia, Carney was asked if Ford’s running of the Reagan ad had upset him because of its impact on the progress of the U.S. trade talks. Ford and Carney are from opposing political parties.
“In any complicated, high-stakes negotiation, you can get unexpected twists and turns. And you have to keep your cool during those situations,” Carney said. “It doesn’t pay to be upset. Emotions don’t carry you very far. And we had made progress to repeat, and we stand by the progress that had been made.”
He added that “every Canadian is a stakeholder” in the negotiations.
Courtesy/Source: Newsweek
