Carney pressed Ford to pull anti-tariff ad blamed for derailing U.S. trade talks

Ontario Premier Doug Ford says the Prime Minister called him a couple of times while Mark Carney was on his trip to Asia, to ask Ford to pull the ad campaign cited by Donald Trump as his reason for ending trade talks.

On Tuesday, Ford doubled down on the commercial, crediting it with keeping conversation about tariffs going south of the border.

President Trump wanted me to pull it one day, I waited three more days and then paused it to get back to the table. It was very very effective,” says Ford.

The premier is digging in his heels after Carney told reporters over the weekend that he wouldn’t have run the ad, and issued an apology to the president over it.

“I did, I did apologize to the president. [The] president was offended by the ad rather, and it’s not something I would have done, so I apologized to him,” Carney says.

READ MORE: How it started, how it ended: A chronology of Ontario’s ad blitz against U.S. tariffs

“I’m not going to go back and forth. I had a different recollection of our conversation,” says Ford.

called off trade talks on Oct. 23, blaming the commercial that aired on American TV channels.

On Tuesday, Ford said that Carney, who was on an official visit to Asia, did ask him more than once to take the ads down. But Ford kept them running for the first weekend of the world series.

“He called me a couple of times from Asia and asked me to pull it, and I said I wasn’t going to do it. I said we were going to pause the ad on Monday and that’s exactly what we did. It [had] 12.4 billion impressions around the world, and they talked about it on the senate floor,” says Ford.

READ MORE: Carney asked Ford ‘a couple of times’ to pull anti-tariff ad, premier says

Ford also said he and Carney have a great relationship. He trusts that the PM is trying to get the best deal possible.

He’s calling on Carney to focus on negotiating down tariffs on the auto sector — where a 25 per cent duty on non-CUSMA compliant vehicles is causing uncertainty and lay-offs in the province.

“No deal is better than a bad deal, that’s what I always say,” says Ford.

Trump also threatened to add an additional 10 per cent tariff on all Canadian goods following Ford’s ad.

With tariffs in mind, the Ford government is expected to present its fall budget on Thursday.

READ MORE: Carney government to table fall budget, deficit could hit $90B