President Trump withdrew from trade negotiations with Canada on Thursday night, furious over a “fake” TV ad by the Ontario government that quoted former President Ronald Reagan from 38 years ago. He has previously criticized tariffs, President Trump’s favorite economic tool.
On April 25, 1987, President Reagan stated, “In the long run, these trade barriers harm all American workers and consumers.”
President Trump attacked the ad on Truth Social on Friday, saying, “Canada cheated and got caught!!! They fraudulently took a big ad saying President Ronald Reagan didn’t like tariffs when in fact he loved our country and national security tariffs.”
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute criticized X’s ad on Thursday night, saying it “misrepresents the President’s Radio Address to the Nation on Free and Fair Trade, dated April 25, 1987.”
President Trump called the ad fake, but President Reagan’s words were real. But context is missing.
Let’s look at the facts here.
President Reagan took office a week after he imposed tariffs on Japanese semiconductors and at a time when concerns about Japan’s rising economic power were growing. He was trying to explain the decision, but it seemed to go against his reputation as a free trader.
In fact, President Reagan didn’t like tariffs. He often criticized government policies, including tariffs and other protectionist measures that impeded free trade, and devoted much of his 1987 radio speech to arguing against tariffs.
“High tariffs will inevitably lead to foreign retaliation and a violent trade war,” he said. “The result is higher and higher tariffs, higher and higher trade barriers, and lower and lower competition. So soon, people stop buying because of the artificially raised prices of tariffs that support inefficiency and poor management. And then the worst happens: markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries close, and millions of people lose their jobs.”
But Reagan’s policies were more complex than his rhetoric.
In addition to taxing Japanese semiconductors, President Reagan also taxed large motorcycles from Japan to protect Harley-Davidson. He also strongly persuaded Japanese automakers to accept “voluntary” restrictions on exports to the United States, ultimately encouraging them to set up factories in the Midwest and South.
And it pressured other countries to devalue their currencies in order to make U.S. exports more competitive on world markets.
Robert Lighthizer, the Reagan trade official who served as President Trump’s top trade negotiator from 2017 to 2021, wrote in his 2023 memoir that “President Reagan made a distinction between free trade in theory and free trade in practice.”
In 1988, analysts at the liberal Cato Institute even declared Reagan a “strong defender of protectionism.”
But Reagan was no trade warrior. He spoke about semiconductor tariffs in an April 1987 radio speech, saying that he had been forced to impose semiconductor tariffs because Japan was not complying with trade agreements, saying, “Such tariffs, trade barriers, and restrictions of all kinds are anathema to me.”
Trump, on the other hand, has no such reservations. He argues that tariffs can protect American industry, bring manufacturing back to the United States and raise money for the Treasury. Since returning to the White House in January, he has imposed double-digit tariffs on nearly every country on the planet, targeting specific products such as autos, steel and pharmaceuticals.
The average effective tariff rate in the U.S. rose from about 2.5% at the beginning of 2025 to 18%, the highest since 1934, according to Yale University’s Budget Institute.
President Trump has been an avid user of import taxes, proudly calling himself “Tariff Man,” but has drawn challenges from businesses and states who say he oversteps his authority. The Constitution gives Congress the power to impose taxes, including tariffs, but lawmakers have gradually ceded considerable power over trade policy to the White House. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in the case early next month.
President Trump claimed on Thursday that the Canadian ad was aimed at “interfering with the decisions of the United States Supreme Court and other courts.”
Wiseman writes for The Associated Press.
