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The Canadian Provincial Leader Going Toe-to-Toe With Trump

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WSJ

Mar 13, 2025 11:09 AM IST

He once called President Trump a “marketing genius” and now he blasts his tariff plans.

Canada is hunting for ways to respond to President Trump’s tariff threats, and some of the most forceful pushback has come not from national leaders but from Doug Ford, the head of the country’s most populous province.

The Canadian Provincial Leader Going Toe-to-Toe With Trump PREMIUM

The Canadian Provincial Leader Going Toe-to-Toe With Trump

When Trump said earlier this month that he would levy 25% tariffs on many Canadian goods, it was Ford who announced that Ontario would in turn levy a 25% export tax on electricity that the province sends to 1.5 million homes in Minnesota, New York and Michigan.

The next day, Ford backed off after Trump threatened to double the tariff on Canadian steel and aluminum, and Ford spoke directly with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The two men agreed to meet Thursday in Washington.

With Canada awaiting a snap election expected to be called soon, Ford has become the unlikely face of Canadian resistance in Trump’s trade war. It is a surprising place to find a provincial leader who lived in the U.S. for years and once described Trump as a “marketing genius” who would unleash economic prosperity with lower taxes.

Ford, who is 60 years old and won re-election in Ontario last month, is known in Canada as a right-leaning pragmatist. After militants attacked Israel in 2023, he called local pro-Palestinian demonstrations “hate rallies,” and he has come out against medically supervised facilities for drug users promoted by activists and politicians in some Canadian cities.

“He is somebody who I think can speak the language of Trump voters perhaps better than other politicians here in Canada,” said Kory Teneycke, Ford’s campaign manager.

Though he is chairman of the Council of the Federation, a group of the leaders of Canada’s 10 provinces and 3 territories, Ford has no official voice in the state-to-state negotiations between Canada and the U.S.

But Ford has been increasingly vocal in his opposition to Trump’s tariff plans, which was key to Ford’s re-election campaign. He has warned Americans on CNN that a trade war would lead to “absolute chaos” and cause factories to close and prices to increase. On CNBC, he said the economic downturn would be referred to as the “Trump recession.” On Fox News, he urged the Trump administration to work with Canada, which he called the U.S.’s “treasured ally,” to create a more prosperous and secure North America. In January, he appeared on TV wearing a “Canada Is Not for Sale” hat.

“He’s seen the vacuum that has existed at the federal level and has stepped in and tried to take a harder line,” said Eric Miller, a Canadian who is the Washington-based president of the Rideau Potomac Strategy Group, a consulting firm that works on cross-border issues.

Ford’s moves have caught Trump’s attention. On Tuesday, Trump referred to Ford as a “gentleman,” and said, “As you know there’s a very strong man in Canada who said he was going to charge a surcharge or a tariff on electricity coming into our country.”

“He’s not going to do that,” Trump said. “It would have been a very bad thing if he did, and he’s not going to do that, so I respect that.”

In an interview, Ford said he backed off on his threat to tax electricity exports after speaking with Lutnick. “It’s not weakness,” he said. “When someone reaches out to you and offers you an olive branch, you take it. The worst thing you can do in a negotiation is hang up and walk away from the table.”

Ford’s high profile reflects Canada’s current political transition. Justin Trudeau’s tenure as prime minister effectively ended Sunday, when his Liberal Party chose Mark Carney as its new leader. Carney won’t officially become Canada’s leader until Friday, according to a person familiar with the plans. He is then expected to call a general election, leaving Canada’s leadership in caretaker mode until a new government is chosen.

Doug Ford, who became Ontario premier in 2018, lived for many years in Chicago.

Canadian reciprocal tariffs take effect Thursday, and Carney has said he plans to continue Canada’s strategy of responding to Trump’s tariffs with targeted duties of its own. Carney’s Liberal Party, which is likely to face voters in a matter of weeks, has risen in the polls as Canadians react to the tariff threats.

Ford met Wednesday with Carney and said the two leaders agreed that Canada needs to push back against Trump. “We’re going to have to respond, dollar-for-dollar, tariff-for-tariff,” said Ford.

Ford and Lutnick will be joined at Thursday’s meeting in Washington by U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, Canadian Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S.

“Do we think we’re walking away with a whole deal? No. That’s going to take a while to run through,” Ford said in the interview. “It’s all about building a relationship, and the quicker we can build a relationship, the quicker we can discuss what their needs are and what our needs are.”

Other Canadian provincial premiers are also stepping in. On Tuesday, Danielle Smith, the leader of the oil-rich province of Alberta, met with the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. She previously had traveled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to lobby for the province’s energy industry, which sends more than four million barrels of oil a day to the U.S.

A senior government official said Trudeau’s center-left government had a good relationship with Ford, despite ideological differences. The nature of Trump’s threats has made it difficult to know what the most effective retaliation strategy is, said the official. Trump’s forceful reaction to Ford’s gambit reinforces the impression that access to energy and other resources remains a sensitive issue for the Trump administration, the official said.

Ford entered politics 25 years ago as the campaign manager and top aide for his younger brother, Rob Ford, the former mayor of Toronto whose political career ended in 2014 after a video surfaced of him smoking crack. The brothers led a populist movement that they termed “Ford Nation” and that called for cutting waste at city hall, challenging organized labor and privatizing garbage collection. While trimming the city budget, the brothers took part in public weight-loss challenges.

Ford, who became Ontario premier in 2018, lived for many years in Chicago, where he ran the U.S. operations of a printing company founded by his father. Before every interview, Ford says how much he loves the U.S. and the American people.

But he has said that Canada and his Ontario government have been forced to respond to an “unprovoked attack” by Trump. He has warned that Trump’s tariffs will cause the U.S. stock markets to “go downhill quicker than the American bobsled team.”

“This chaos has to stop,” said Ford.

Write to Vipal Monga at vipal.monga@wsj.com and Ryan Dubé at ryan.dube@wsj.com

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