The Ad That Ended US-Canada Trade Talks

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Kate Bullivant (0:18)

President Trump calls off all trade talks with Canada over a controversial Ronald Reagan ad. Plus, the White House confirms Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will meet next week. And the pressure is on for lawmakers as the continuing government shutdown looks to end paychecks for many federal workers.

Anvee Bhutani (0:38)

Some reps on both sides are working towards interim measures that could maybe help pay certain workers. But ultimately the leadership of both parties are grounded in their positions and neither side is really willing to compromise.

Kate Bullivant (0:54)

It's Friday, October 24th. I'm Kate Bullivant for the Wall Street Journal. And here is the AM Edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. President Trump says he's calling off trade talks with Canada, pointing to a TV ad paid for by the Ontario government. The advertisement features snippets of a voiceover of Ronald Reagan's radio address from Camp David in 1987, when he spoke about the negative impacts of tariffs on American businesses and workers.

Ronald Reagan (1:31)

When someone says, let's impose tariffs on foreign imports, it looks like they're doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes for a short while it works, but only for a short time.

Kate Bullivant (1:46)

Posting on social media, Trump called the ad fraudulent and fake and argued that it was designed to interfere with the courts as they weigh the legality of his global tariffs. The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for more information. Ahead of Trump's comments late last night, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute said the ad misrepresented Reagan's address and that the Ontario government didn't ask for permission to use the audio. The Foundation didn't clarify about what was inaccurate about the ad. And as our Daniel Bach explains, the threat to cut off negotiations comes just two weeks after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney visited Trump at the White House.

Daniel Bach (2:28)

The two countries had been in discussions about how to reduce certain tariffs, in particular the 50% levies Trump has placed on Canadian aluminum and steel. Since then, Ontario has lost auto sector jobs as Stellantis and GM announced this month. They're pulling back from building cars in the province and shifting some of that production to the US partly because of Trump's tariffs. And in response Canada said yesterday it's cutting the number of vehicles Stellantis and GM can import into the country tariff free. Here's Prime Minister Mark Carney speaking earlier this week.

Mark Carney (3:02)

Many of our former strengths as a country, former strengths more particularly as our economy, strengths based on close ties to America have become our vulnerabilities. And as a result of that the jobs of workers in our industries most affected by the US tariffs in autos and steel and lumber are under threat.

Daniel Bach (3:23)

Now at the same time Ontario's leader Doug Ford has been pushing Canada to be more aggressive with the US in its negotiations saying he's willing to retaliate by curbing energy and mineral exports.

Kate Bullivant (3:39)

The White House has announced that a hotly anticipated meeting between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will go ahead in Asia next week. Thursday's meeting potentially paves the way to de-escalate trade tensions between the world's two largest economies that have flared up as Beijing expanded curbs on exports of rare earth minerals earlier this month. Markets reporter Chelsea Delaney is here. Chelsea, stocks seem to be buoyed by news of this meeting.

Chelsea Delaney (4:09)

Yes, markets are still very much paying attention to trade tensions. We've seen over the past couple of weeks when the tensions do start to escalate again, markets sell off and now that we do have this meeting confirmed, we've seen stocks rise. Investors are seeing this as good news because there are still a lot of outstanding trade issues. The trade relationship between China and the US remains a bit of a roller coaster. We've seen Trump in the past couple of weeks threatening tariffs of 100% and then 155%. That's something that would be very important to investors if we do see a big escalation in this trade war because so far, markets have been very resilient. The global economy, the US economy, Asian economies have been very resilient to these trade tensions, but that's because there's a lot of exceptions. There's a lot of exceptions to the tariffs and things like that. So I think investors are definitely going to be watching this closely.