Trump Is Attacking Canada When He Should Be Attacking Reagan

One of Donald Trump’s most interesting political achievements has been to force a Republican Party that had embraced free-trade orthodoxy for many decades into supporting, or at least tolerating, his own vintage 19th-century protectionist views. Like his harsh criticism of the Iraq War launched by the last GOP president, Trump’s frequently savage words about free trade and globalization have clearly embarrassed a lot of Republicans who are old enough to remember when that kind of talk was associated with lefty union types and cranky Old Right figures like Pat Buchanan. The fact that he has now made tariff-driven trade wars the centerpiece of his second-term economic policies is often ignored by old-school Republicans, or rationalized as merely a rhetorical weapon he deploys in cutting commercial deals with other countries.

But at least one of the Canadians who are so often an object of Trump’s protectionist belligerence is drawing attention to the 180-degree turn the 47th president executed in conservative international economic thinking, or the lack thereof. Ontario premier Doug Ford ran an ad on U.S. television networks featuring clips in which the unquestioned patron saint of pre-Trump conservatism, Ronald Reagan, loudly and proudly embraces free trade:

Here’s what the Gipper says in the ad, which is from a 1987 speech:

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.

But over the long run, such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer.

 

High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars.

Then the worst happens. Markets shrink and collapse. Businesses and industry shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs.

Throughout the world, there’s a growing realization that the way to prosperity for all nations is rejecting protectionist legislation and promoting fair and free competition.

America’s jobs and growth are at stake.

Trump promptly pitched a fit at Truth Social and suspended trade negotiations with Canada:

CANADA CHEATED AND GOT CAUGHT!!!They fraudulently took a big buy ad saying that Ronald Reagan did not like Tariffs, when actually he LOVED TARIFFS FOR OUR COUNTRY, AND ITS NATIONAL SECURITY…. Thank you to the Ronald Reagan Foundation for exposing this FRAUD.

Actually, the Reagan Foundation complained that Ontario hadn’t asked for permission to use the clip and said it “misrepresented” the overall speech, which indeed justified the imposition of tariffs on Japan. But there’s nothing fake about the clip; Reagan was making it clear that the measures he was taking against Japan were unfortunate and temporary expedients that did not detract from his more general commitment to free trade. The 40th president did not “love tariffs for our country and its national security.” Like nearly every pre-Trump Republican leader who remembered the disastrous effects of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which helped exacerbate the Great Depression, Reagan only used trade restraints sparingly and grudgingly.

Trump, on the other hand, has called “tariffs the most beautiful word to me in the dictionary” and believes in them not as a temporary measure or negotiating ploy but as the foundation of a good economy. He dreams of replacing the federal income tax with tariff revenues. He is precisely the sort of demagogue Reagan was speaking of as a misguided advocate of tariffs as “patriotic.”

You can debate whether Trump is right or (as most economists believe) wrong. But you can’t debate whether he’s taken the free-trade policies of Ronald Reagan (who was particularly devoted to dismantling barriers to trade with Canada) and tossed them in a wastebasket. That may embarrass him and other Republicans, but it’s no excuse for blaming those with better memories.

This post has been updated.