Since Donald Trump began his second term, Canadian politician Doug Ford has become one of the loudest international voices to contest the US president\u2019s \u201cAmerica First\u201d trade policy. <\/p>\n
The Ontario premier is now a ubiquitous presence on US cable news as he pushes back against US tariffs on Canadian goods while telling Americans that \u201cCanada is not for sale\u201d in the face of Trump\u2019s threat to turn it into the 51st state. <\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how the leader of Canada\u2019s most populous province became one of the standard bearers of Canada\u2019s response to the Trump administration. <\/p>\n
Ford comes from a prominent political family in Ontario. His father served in the provincial legislature and his older brother Rob Ford was a colorful figure in Toronto city politics for over a decade. <\/p>\n
After Rob Ford left his seat on Toronto\u2019s city council when he became mayor in 2010, Doug Ford ran and took his place. Three years into the elder Ford brother\u2019s tenure as mayor of Toronto, however, Rob was caught on video smoking crack cocaine. <\/p>\n
Though Rob Ford admitted to using the drug, he refused to resign, and the scandal seriously damaged his reputation and derailed his term as mayor. After spending time in drug rehabilitation, Rob Ford managed to return to his old seat on Toronto\u2019s city council in 2014 before his death from cancer in 2016. <\/p>\n
Two years later, Doug Ford contested and won the 2018 race for leader of Ontario\u2019s center-right Progressive Conservatives, leading the party to victory the same year and assuming the premiership. <\/p>\n
When Ford first ran to lead Ontario\u2019s government, he would tout his extensive business experience and denounce elites who drink \u201ctheir little glass of champagne with their pinkies up in the air.\u201d <\/p>\n
Ford\u2019s brash rhetoric and election night pledge to end the government\u2019s \u201cparty with the taxpayers\u2019 money\u201d drew numerous comparisons to Trump. Ford told Toronto\u2019s CityNews in 2016 that a Trump presidency would be far more preferable to having \u201cCrooked Hillary\u201d in the White House. <\/p>\n
Yet over the arc of his premiership, Ford\u2019s efforts at bipartisanship have buoyed his popularity in Ontario. During the height <\/strong>of the Covid-19 pandemic, he developed a cordial relationship with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau\u2019s Liberal government, particularly with Chrystia Freeland, who was deputy prime minister at the time. <\/p>\n \u201cAll the premiers love Chrystia Freeland,\u201d Ford told reporters in 2023. \u201cI just love her a little more than the rest of the premiers.\u201d <\/p>\n The premier\u2019s re-election campaign, in which he won his third consecutive term in late February, plainly asked voters for \u201ca strong, four-year mandate\u201d to protect Ontario from Trump\u2019s tariffs, according to a January press release from his party. <\/p>\n Ford is uniquely sensitive to the effects of Trump\u2019s protectionism. His province\u2019s economy is highly integrated with the United States: its electrical grid is connected with its southern neighbor, and Ontario trades hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods with the US every year. <\/p>\n Ford has sought to broadcast that close relationship through his many back-to-back TV appearance in the past months, often beginning his interviews with the refrain that \u201cCanadians love Americans.\u201d <\/p>\n When he isn\u2019t speaking to reporters, Ford has placed Ontario\u2019s message in the commercial breaks. He launched an ad campaign in December aimed at US consumers, reminding them of Ontario, their \u201cally to the North,\u201d and eager trading partner. On March 9, Ford told CBS that Ontario would launch a new series of ads attacking Trump\u2019s tariff policy. <\/p>\n Asked by reporters how much he\u2019s willing to spend on advertisements, Ford claimed on Tuesday that Ontario\u2019s ad campaign would ultimately save Canada \u201ctens of billions of dollars\u201d by stymying the trade war. <\/p>\n After Trump announced tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Ford was among several Canadian premiers who ordered US alcohol off provincial liquor store shelves and encouraged his constituents to \u201cBuy Canadian.\u201d <\/p>\n The 60-year-old has also taken aim directly at one member of Trump\u2019s inner circle, tearing up a provincial contract with Elon Musk\u2019s satellite internet provider Starlink and banning American companies from working with Ontario\u2019s government. <\/p>\n But few have adopted Ford\u2019s theatrical flair or gone to the same lengths to show their displeasure with Trump\u2019s tariffs. He often dons a \u201cCanada Is Not For Sale\u201d baseball cap reminiscent of Trump\u2019s trademark MAGA hats. <\/p>\n In the face of Trump\u2019s claims that Canada is ripping Americans off, Ford has offered colorful threats of his own. At a recent press conference, the premier said that he\u2019d shut off Ontario\u2019s electricity exports to the US \u201cwith a smile on [his] face\u201d if the Trump Administration escalated tariffs. <\/p>\n But on Tuesday, he backed down on his 25% surcharge on electricity exports to three US states, saying it was suspended \u201ctemporarily\u201d after speaking with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. <\/p>\n \u201cTit for tat, I\u2019ve agreed to suspend temporarily, and we always have that tool in our tool kit until we sit down,\u201d Ford told reporters in Toronto, before adding that if Trump \u201ccontinues with the aluminum and steel\u201d tariffs, Canada\u2019s government \u201cwill respond dollar for dollar, tariff for tariff.\u201d <\/p>\n Throughout his media crusade, Ford has tried to appeal to the American people, and has urged the US to come back to the negotiating table. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Since Donald Trump began his second term, Canadian politician Doug Ford has become one of the loudest international voices to contest the US president\u2019s \u201cAmerica First\u201d trade policy. The Ontario premier is now a ubiquitous presence on US cable news as he pushes back against US tariffs on Canadian goods while telling Americans that \u201cCanada…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4309,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Canada\u2019s anti-tariff spokesman<\/h2>\n