Tariffs Over a TV Ad: Trump vs Canada

This is yet another example of Trump making a promise to people, writing it down, signing it, taking that promise, throwing it in the garbage can. Not for any violation by the other party, but just because I feel like it. Tariffs over a TV ad Trump escalates against Canada. According to the Times, President Trump is swiping an additional 10% tariff on Canadian goods after Ontario aired an ad using Ronald Reagan's 1987 anti tariff remark. The ad will be pulled from the air on Monday. It did rearrange Reagan's words, but not really his message. Trump called it a fraud, suspended trade talks Thursday and now says, I am increasing the tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now. He offered no details on which products. Talks had focused on easing U.S. duties that already hit Canadian steel and aluminum at 50%, softwood lumber at 10% and some auto parts at 25%. Canada's Trade Minister, Dominic LeBlanc said Ottawa is, quote, ready to build on the progress made in recent weeks. Top White House economist Kevin Hassett said frustration has built up over time. Industry warned of blowback. The president's threat is really to charge American taxpayers billions because of a benign World Series ad, said Flavio Volpe of Canada's Automotive Parts Manufacturing Association. What's the real message here? Once again, Donald Trump saw something on TV which is the only way to reach him, apparently didn't like it, not because it was factually incorrect, but because it was true and it made him look stupid and he decided to hold the entire US Economy and the entire Canadian economy hostage because his feelings got hurt. That makes sense if you're a petty tyrant, but not if you're the leader of what's supposed to be the greatest free market democracy in the world. Let's dig a little deeper here. Let me actually show you the ad in question, because if you just look at the reports, the headline quite often is, you know, Trump said this. Other people say that maybe it's both. Maybe they both have a point. Or you hear that the ad was edited selectively. Well, there's no such thing as an ad that isn't edited. So together, let's take a look at this ad and you can be the judge whether you think this was an unfair ad for the Ontario Province to run. So this is courtesy of the New York Times. They're showing the ad and they're actually showing what the raw footage was of the President as well. So let me show you indeed the footage and you can judge for yourself. Okay, so you heard the beginning of the ad, then you saw Reagan saying it himself. This is actual archives, not courtesy of the Canadian government, but from the Ronald Reagan Foundation. So they have no incentive to put out any disinformation here. So the beginning of the ad starts 100% with what Reagan actually said in a speech. Now, a little context. It is true that Reagan did sometimes put tariffs in place. He wasn't a 100% consistent free market libertarian. Never, never, never have tariffs. But by and large, most of his rhetoric and most of his actions were in fact to reduce tariffs. He was seen as a free trader, keeping taxes down, keeping tariffs low, because most economists would tell you a tariff is a tax. So when Ontario is making Reagan using Reagan to make a point, it's not exactly like they're distorting some words and making him sound like a communist. It's consistent with everything the Reagan philosophy stood for. But you've seen the ad so far, you can judge for yourself. It's 100% verbatim so far. Let's listen more.

Looks like they're doing the patriotic thing by protecting American job.

So again, it's pulling an exact quote, the actual voiceover of what Reagan said and putting it over what we call B roll in the industry video of images.

And sometimes it works.

Now you may be hearing a slight echo. The reason for that is they are showing the audio from the ad and the audio from the raw footage of Reagan and it's exactly the same thing. So now it says, next four separate sound bites are combined to explain what's wrong with tariffs. So this is where they combined it, I would argue. I don't think there's any journalists in the world who would argue that this is sort of unfair because it's not fundamentally distorting the message. A little context here. Anytime you see a quote, it's out of context of something else. The issue is, is it out of context in a way that fundamentally distorts the person's main idea? If I say, I would be crazy to say I love communism because I hate communism and you quoted me as saying I love communism, that would be quoting me selectively in such a way is to be misinterpreting what I'm saying. Quoting me out of context to misinterpret and to distort the fundamental meaning. Any fair minded person would agree with that. But if you're interviewing me and I go on and on and on and on saying I love free market capitalism, but then I also say, and I do love capital, or I do love communism too, and you want to quote just that. That's a fair quote. Now, for the record, I don't actually love communism, but I think you get my point. Let's watch more of this video. Again, if you can see the distortion in a way that's fundamentally perverting the idea of what Reagan was saying, you're smarter than I am. Let's listen some more to this footage right now. So now you can see they skip to a different part of the actual speech, but he's talking about, he's giving reasons as to why he doesn't like.

Tariffs hurt every American worker and consume high tariffs.

So they went from the 52nd mark of Reagan's original presentation. Now they're at the three minute mark.

And the triggering of fierce trademark market shrink and billions of is their job throughout the world.

Now they're pulling from the middle of it. So again, if this were a news story and they were presenting this as if he gave a speech that was 30 seconds long, you could quibble with it and say, okay, that's not completely accurate. But for an advertisement using actual words spoken by a president who had a long track record of giving a lot of speeches and policy statements against tariffs, there's fundamentally nothing misleading about this ad. And Trump is throwing a temper tantrum and is going to be harming millions of consumers, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of businesses on both sides of the border, all because he's upset that Canada has an ad that tells the.

Truth realization that the way to prosperity for only is reject Texas legislation and promoting fair and free company.

So again, those are actual words that Reagan spoke. The fact that they used it in a slightly different order has absolutely no impact on whether it was used truthfully or in a distorted way. So really, what we're seeing here, again, it's not the first time we've seen this. What we're seeing from this administration again and again and again is a war against reality, a war against truth. Trump is punishing Canada not for lying. He's punishing them for saying the truth and for saying the truth in a way that makes him look bad. In the same way we see, you know, Justice Department officials and other government officials who said, yes, Joe Biden received more votes in 2020. Those people are punished not for lying, not for voter fraud, but for saying the truth. The reason this is so significant is it's a part of an ongoing war against reality, against empiricism, against the very concept of modern thought, of the modern era, that facts matter, that reality is something that is objective. And it's really more like going back to medieval times and saying, well, I'm the king if I say black is white and white is black. If you disagree with me, off with your head. It really does help in Trump's defense. He hasn't cut off anyone's head yet. At least if you're not a Venezuelan or someone in the Caribbean he doesn't like. He's not doing that to U.S. citizens yet. But it makes you wonder, are we that far away from that? So, again, if you're asking yourself, wow, I do business with Canada all the time. They buy my products, I buy their products. Now everything is skyrocketing in cost. What happened? This is it. It was this one ad. And the other context that gets lost in all this is we have a free trade agreement with Canada, North American Free Trade Agreement, which was signed in by a U.S. president, you know, which President Donald Trump in his first term. So this is yet another example of Trump making a promise to people, writing it down, signing it, taking that promise, throwing it in the garbage can, not for any violation by the other party, but just because I feel like it. Even, even that North American Free Trade Agreement needs a little extra context because it's exactly the same agreement we had with President Clinton, and that was in, in force for 25 years until Trump tore that up and then rewrote it, almost identical, and signed his name because he wanted his name on something. So it's increasingly bizarre times. Are we going to be able to survive a tariff on Canada? Yes. Are we going to be able to survive the idea that there is no such thing as factual truth anymore? That I'm a lot more skeptical of. When we have a president who says, here's something, here's someone making an argument, they have evidence, third party evidence, facts behind them. But because I don't like it, because it sort of makes me look like a fool, I'm going to call them a liar. I'm going to convince my followers that they're lying, and I'm going to throw a temper tantrum and throw, and throw them under the bus. It's a truly, truly bizarre situation.