[[link removed]]

TRUMP’S FURY AT THE ONTARIO AD IS ALL ABOUT THE SUPREME COURT  
[[link removed]]


 

Matt Ford
October 28, 2025
The New Republic
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ The president is worried that his tariffs case before the court has
big holes. Canadian officials have confirmed those fears are well
founded. _

President Donald Trump and Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister,
during a meeting in the Oval Office, Shawn Thew/Getty Images

 

Baseball fans who watched the World Series over the past week saw
Addison Barger pinch-hit a grand slam to capture Game 1 for the
Toronto Blue Jays and Yoshinobu Yamamoto retire 20 consecutive batters
for a complete game to secure a Los Angeles Dodgers win in Game 2. In
between those feats, they also witnessed a minor international
incident.

 
The government of Ontario, one of Canada’s provinces, aired a
commercial during the games that centered on a 1987 speech by
then-President Ronald Reagan about trade policy. In the speech, Reagan
condemns tariffs and other protectionist measures that restrict free
trade and lower Americans’ quality of life.

“High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries
and the triggering of fierce trade wars,” Reagan said in the
remarks. “The result is more and more tariffs, higher and higher
trade barriers, and less and less competition. So, soon, because of
the prices made artificially high by tariffs that subsidize
inefficiency and poor management, people stop buying. Then the worst
happens: Markets shrink and collapse; businesses and industries shut
down; and millions of people lose their jobs.”

The ad was clearly meant as a critique of the Trump administration’s
trade policy, and Trump—who gets reliably worked up any time the
television isn’t nice to him—reacted accordingly. “The sole
purpose of this FRAUD was Canada’s hope that the United States
Supreme Court will come to their ‘rescue’ on Tariffs that they
have used for years to hurt the United States,” he claimed
[[link removed]] on
his personal social media website. “Now the United States is able to
defend itself against high and overbearing Canadian Tariffs (and those
from the rest of the World as well!).”

Trump also quoted from a statement by the Ronald Reagan Presidential
Library that denounced the ad. “Their Advertisement was to be taken
down, IMMEDIATELY, but they let it run last night during the World
Series, knowing that it was a FRAUD,” Trump continued. “Because of
their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am
increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are
paying now.”

Three things stand out about the president’s statement. One is the
legal threats made by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and
endorsed by Trump over the ad’s supposed misuse of Reagan’s
remarks. As the Associated Press noted
[[link removed]]
over the weekend, Reagan did occasionally levy import taxes on
countries like Japan and on products like semiconductors, in response
to foreign trade policies, but did not “love” tariffs as Trump
claimed. 

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library doesn’t have any “legal
options,” as its statement suggested. The library is a museum and
archive, not some extension of his now-deceased person. It can’t sue
Canada for defamation on someone else’s behalf, or for a dead
person, or for something that is objectively true. Reagan really did
give that speech and say those words and have those policies. Indeed,
if I were a member of the Reagan family, I might be a little annoyed
that a presidential library seems more interested in placating a
sitting president than honestly representing its namesake’s legacy.

Another thing that stands out is Trump’s reference to the Supreme
Court. His stated fear is that the advertisement could influence the
justices. Oral arguments in the tariffs case are scheduled for
November 5, and their outcome is clearly on the president’s mind.
(He even threatened to attend in person.) But the ad made no mention
of the court itself, nor did it appear to be directed toward the
justices.

If influencing the justices was Ontario’s goal, it was a poorly
planned effort. The ads did not air during the Yankees’ now-finished
postseason run, where lifelong fan (and 1995 season savior
[[link removed]])
Sonia Sotomayor might have seen them. Nor did they appear when the
Dodgers trounced Samuel Alito’s beloved Philadelphia Phillies in the
divisional round. Neither Elena Kagan’s Mets nor the Washington
Nationals, whose fans include Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, even
made it to the postseason. (I do not believe any of the other four
justices are Dodgers or Blue Jays fans, though they are free to
request a correction via email.)

It is also not illegal or improper to air commercials with the hope of
influencing Supreme Court justices. Nobody does it because it would be
absurd and extremely inefficient; there is no way to guarantee that
anyone on the court will be watching TV when your hopeful spot airs.
If Ontario officials wanted to be sure that they had the justices’
ears, they’d have done better to file a friend-of-the-court brief in
the current case. Foreign governments have done so in previous cases
with international implications. None have been filed yet in in the
tariffs case, likely because it would prompt the sort of backlash from
Trump that we are witnessing now.

If nothing else, Trump’s mention of the Supreme Court would seem to
betray a churning sense of concern that the justices might rule
against him. That would be a seismic blow for his administration:
Trump’s domestic economic agenda is built on the premise that he can
impose trillions of dollars in tariffs on imported goods to punish
foreign trade practices, stimulate domestic manufacturing, and raise
revenues for the federal government.

Without that freewheeling power, Trump would have to rely on Congress
to pass new tariffs as he cajoles, bullies, threatens, and
occasionally negotiates with foreign governments over new trade deals,
which would be a near-fatal obstacle. The White House apparently began
recognizing the possibility that it could lose these legal challenges
when it sent an unusual series of letters to the Federal Circuit Court
of Appeals in August warning of a second Great Depression if it ruled
against him. (The court did rule against him, and economic collapse
did not follow.)

The most important thing about the ad is Trump’s response to it.
Imposing an additional 10 percent tariff on Canadian goods because one
of their provinces ran an ad during the World Series demolishes the
legal justifications for Trump’s tariff policy. The Trump
administration’s first wave of tariffs—the ones challenged by the
plaintiffs in _Learning Resources v. Trump_—came after Trump issued
declarations of national emergency about various harms that the
tariffs would supposedly remedy.

Trump’s claimed authority comes from the International Emergency
Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, of 1977, a Cold War–era law that
sought to clarify and harmonize certain trade-related powers that
presidents could wield at Congress’s behest. After declaring a
national emergency, the president can take a wide range of actions on
foreign trade, investment, currency exchanges, and so on. That
includes the power to “regulate importation.”

What counts as a national emergency is up to the president’s
discretion. In its brief for the Supreme Court, for example, the
Justice Department told the justices that “the President, in his
exercise of power over the military and foreign affairs, has
determined are necessary to rectify America’s country-killing trade
deficits and to stem the flood of fentanyl and other lethal drugs
across our borders.” It is unclear how raising prices on Canadian
lumber and steel would affect, let alone reduce, illegal drug
smuggling.

Trump has played fast and loose with these national security
justifications before. In a memorable exchange during his first term,
then–Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reportedly asked the
president what national security threat Canada could possibly pose to
justify his imposition of IEEPA tariffs on Canadian steel and
aluminum. According to CNN, Trump replied
[[link removed]],
“Didn’t you guys burn down the White House?”—an apparent
reference to the War of 1812.

This is not to say that fentanyl isn’t a dangerous threat to
American life or that an increase in domestic manufacturing capacity
would be bad for the country. The problem is that tariffs don’t
really address those problems while imposing severe economic
consequences on Americans along the way. The Trump administration
nevertheless insists that its judgment on what counts as a national
emergency cannot be second-guessed by the courts.

“The president’s determinations in this area are not amenable to
judicial review,” the Justice Department insisted. “Judges lack
the institutional competence to determine when foreign affairs pose an
unusual and extraordinary threat that requires an emergency response;
that is a task for the political branches.” This is not incorrect;
courts have historically given broad deference to the other two
branches on foreign policy matters for that exact reason.

What Trump is asking the court to agree to goes beyond the ordinary
judicial discomfort toward meddling in diplomatic matters. Raising
tariffs on Canadian imports—to be more clear, raising import taxes
on Americans—because a provincial government ran a commercial during
the World Series that embarrassed the president is not a national
emergency. If it is one, then anything can be a national emergency.
This article could be a national emergency for criticizing the
president, as well. (Fortunately I do not import any raw or finished
goods into the United States, so I am beyond IEEPA’s scope.)

If it is willing to do so, the Supreme Court could easily end the
tariff madness—and its ever-escalating costs
[[link removed]]
to ordinary Americans. The justices could hold that the power to
“regulate importations” does not extend to tariffs, which are a
core Article 1 power for Congress. The court could apply the “major
questions” doctrine, which holds that Congress must “speak
clearly” when writing laws of “vast economic and political
significance,” to rule that IEEPA does not allow presidents to
impose trillions of dollars in tariffs on any country for any reason
at all.

I do not expect the court to curb its historic reluctance to
second-guess executive and legislative decisions on foreign policy.
But it would not hurt if at least some of the justices noted, perhaps
in a concurring opinion, that “deference” does not obligate the
American judiciary to believe that up is down, or north is south, or
that tariffs are paid by foreign countries, or that the president’s
personal sense of embarrassment amounts to a national emergency. Chief
Justice John Roberts famously once said that the court’s job was
akin to that of an umpire who calls “balls and strikes.” That
should also mean not calling a touchdown just because the president
claims he scored one.

===

Matt Ford is a staff writer at _The New Republic._

* Tariffs; Canada; World Series Ad; Supreme Court;
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Bluesky [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]