President Donald Trump’s new trade war with Canada over an advertisement paid for by Ontario featuring former President Ronald Reagan has backfired in what conservative commentator Charlie Sykes called “a brilliant example of the Streisand effect,” drawing millions to watch the ad featuring Reagan condemning tariffs and protectionist trade policies.
“How thin-skinned is the uber-touchy Donald Trump? As you may have heard: A single Canadian ad triggered an extraordinary presidential snit and new trade war,” Sykes wrote on his Substack Sunday.
“Trump was so upset that he cancelled trade talks with Canada and then slapped an additional 10 percent tariff on American consumers of Canadian products. And in a brilliant example of the Streisand Effect, he managed to call international attention to the words of Ronald Reagan, highlighting his massive break with the conservative icon.”
After viewing the ad, Trump immediately announced he was cutting off all trade talks with Canada. He later accused the country of “trying to illegally” influence an impending case before the Supreme Court on the legality of Trump’s tariffs, and on Saturday, slapped the country with higher tariff rates in retaliation.
Trump has gone on to claim the ad misrepresented Reagan’s words, and that the former president was, in fact, a strong supporter of tariffs. However, Trump’s assertions are contradicted by Reagan’s well-documented abandonment of the United States’ protectionist trade policies, including the use of tariffs.
Reagan’s dedication to free trade, as it's referred to, drew a “striking” and “dramatic” contrast with Trump’s own policies, something Sykes argued would now be exposed to countless more Americans, and directly because of the president’s outbursts.
“Of course, Trump could have ignored the whole thing; or shrugged off an ad by a provincial Canadian government. Instead, our petulant president exploded,” Sykes wrote.
“...The intriguing question here is: Why did Reagan’s words rattle Trump so much? He hardly needs to fear any return to conservative principle by the GOP, which has abandoned all pretense of free market economics. But Reagan remains among the most revered dead-gods of conservativism, and so somewhere in Trump’s tangled synapses he recognized a threat.”