Pot Calls The Kettle Black

Pot Calls The Kettle Black

- jim Young

“Our peaceful trading partners are not our enemies, they are our allies. We should beware of the demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends, weakening our economy, our national security and the entire free world - all while cynically waving the American flag.” - Ronald Reagan, 1988

Trump called an anti-tariff advertisement, recently produced by the Ontario Government, a “fraud” and accused Canada of trying to “illegally influence the United States Supreme Court”, which will meet in a couple of weeks to decide if Trump’s tariff’s are constitutional.

Really Trump? Pot? Kettle? Black? Does any of that ring a bell to you?

But if Canada can do anything to help the United States Supreme Court come to a fair and just decision, then I say… more power to Canada.

After seeing the advertisement for the first time, Trump had commented, “If I was Canada I would take that ad also.”

Now, as a Canadian I would normally take a statement like that as a compliment, but coming from Trump, well, it kinda makes me want to second guess my initial response.

However after the Ronald Reagan Foundation took issue with the ad suggesting Canada had misrepresented “former U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s stance on tariffs”, Trump suddenly got his boxers in a bunch and commented on Truth Social, “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.” 

Trump gets his boxers in a bunch.

Trump then got all in a huff, cancelled all trade agreement negotiations with Canada and imposed an additional 10% on Canadian tariffs.

What’s the misrepresentation? Where’s the fraud?

The advertisement only used parts of Reagan’s 1987 speech on tariffs. That’s called editing. How else do you fit 5 minutes of material into a 1 minute advertisement?

Trump wouldn’t know anything about that because he never edits his speeches. Never. Trump insists on rambling on and on about unrelated topics and pretty much anything that pops into his head whether it’s factual or not during any speech he gives, often showing his complete ignorance in every sense of the word, on any number of topics.

Admittedly, the advertisement omitted the part of Reagan’s speech in which he announced new duties he was imposing on Japan at the time, but it also omitted the part where Reagan explained that “imposing such tariffs or trade barriers or restrictions of any kind” were steps he was “loath to take” because “over the long run, such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer.” Reagan also made it clear that “the Japanese semi-conductors were a special case.”

When he claimed Reagan “LOVED TARIFFS” did Trump somehow mistake “LOATHS” for “LOVED”?

Reagan went on to say that they had clear evidence “that Japanese companies were engaging in unfair trade practices that violated an agreement between Japan and the United States.”

It’s interesting to note here that the only violations of past trade agreements between Canada and the United States were committed by Trump when Trump violated CUSMA that HE, himself had brokered in 2020 calling it the “the best and most important trade deal ever made by the USA”.

Then, just 5 years later Trump began criticizing CUSMA (the trade deal he had insisted on), accusing it of being an unfair trade deal and asking “Who would ever sign a thing like this?” Pot, kettle, again Trump… It was you that signed that trade deal.

CUSMA had replaced NAFTA in 2020 after Trump violated the NAFTA agreement.

Ronald Reagan was an early advocate of NAFTA and it was the Reagan administration that signed the first Canada-United States Free Trade Agreemen in 1988 prior to NAFTA. This in turn led to the signing of NAFTA in 1992 which took effect in 1994 to include Mexico.

The whole trade agreement scenario between Canada and the US from 1988 to present has  gone full circle with Trump spreading lies and making up stories to suit his agenda at every step along the way.

To suggest that Trump is acting like nothing more than a spoiled child at this point is to insult spoiled children the world over. When are the people of the United States going to finally sit up and take notice? In the meantime, as Trump drags his country down while countries around the world like Canada do their best to accommodate Trump’s idiot-syncracies, the best we can hope for is to finally get some kind of an agreement in place with Trump that at best, will last only until Trump reneges again anyway. 

But don’t take my word for it.

Here’s the link to the one minute anti-tariff ad that Ontario released earlier this month.

And here’s the link to Reagan’s April 25, 1987 speech - uncut and unedited as published by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. 

If you can see what’s fake or how the speech may have been misrepresented that I have somehow missed… Please, enlighten me.

And just in case you are interested in fact-checking my quote at the beginning of this article, here’s the link to Reagan’s November 26, 1988 speech that it was taken from. Feel free to assure yourself that it was likewise not misrepresented or taken out of context.

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