President Donald Trump has made it clear that his favorite method to gain leverage over opponent countries on the other side of a negotiating table is to raise tariffs. It doesn’t matter whether the offense is trade-related or not.
If there had been any lingering doubt (and I doubt there was), it was erased when Trump announced last week that he was increasing tariffs on Canada by 10% because he didn’t like an anti-tariff commercial Ontario aired across the United States. Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s TV ad quoted the late former President Ronald Reagan, who in 1987 criticized the use of general tariffs as a weapon of trade policy.
It might seem obvious that there is no direct causal trade link between Ontario’s and, by extension Canada’s, acti
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