President raises tariffs on Canada by ten percent over a Canadian television ad about Ronald Reagan.

OK. Pay attention to this one specifically. Saturday morning. The President of the United States goes on his social network and announces that the tariff on Canada, the country we just had the trade meeting with seventeen days ago, is increasing by ten percent. Effective immediately. The reason: a television advertisement.

The advertisement was bought by the Province of Ontario. It ran Friday night during Game 1 of the World Series, which the Toronto Blue Jays were playing in. The ad ran for one minute. The ad consisted, almost entirely, of audio from a 1987 radio address by Ronald Reagan, in which Reagan, at length, in his own voice, on a Saturday in April, argued against tariffs.

That is what the ad is. Reagan, in his own voice, talking against tariffs.

The Reagan Foundation, which holds the rights, said the ad selectively edited the speech. Fine. That is a real complaint. The Foundation recommended viewers watch the full unedited address. Also fine. The full unedited address is on YouTube. It is, by the way, also an argument against tariffs. The cherry-picking, in this case, picked from a tree where every cherry says the same thing.

The President’s response, because Reagan was on television in Canada saying tariffs are bad, was to add a tariff. On Canada. Ten percent. In retaliation against the deceased Republican president who used to host Saturday radio addresses.

Buddy. I have run a casino floor. Stay with me. The man who runs the floor does not get to change the table minimums in retaliation against a guy who is talking about him on the radio. That is a temperament problem. That is a don’t put me in charge of nuclear weapons problem. That is a I am personally affronted by a 1987 audio clip and the way I am going to express the affront is to raise the cost of every aluminum sheet crossing the border on Monday morning problem.

I want you to picture the auto plant in Windsor. Six thousand workers. Three shifts. The aluminum and the steel and the seats and the wire harnesses come across the bridge. The bridge does not care about the World Series. The bridge does not care about the radio address. The bridge cares about the tariff schedule, which on Saturday morning got ten percent more expensive, because a television commercial set the President off.

By Monday Ontario pulled the ad. Of course they did. The damage was already on the ledger. The tariff increase stayed.

I’m arguing with the television. The television is in 1987.