Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Saturday that he has apologized to U.S. President Donald Trump for the anti-tariff television ad which prompted the U.S. leader to inflict additional tariffs on the country and cut off negotiations.
Carney told reporters attending a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Gyeongju, South Korea, that he had offered Trump his apologies during a dinner earlier this week, where he said he spoke privately to the president and had a “very nice conversation” with him.
“The president was offended by the act, or by the ad, rather,” Carney said on Saturday. “It’s not something I would have done—which is to put in place that advertisement—and so I apologized to him.”
The ad, which featured former president Ronald Reagan delivering an anti-tariff speech, was purchased by the province of Ontario and broadcast on major U.S. television networks last month.
Trump accused the ad of being “fake” and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute also distanced it from its content, saying the former president’s speech at Camp David on April 25, 1987, had been misrepresented in the ad.
The ad accurately reproduced Reagan’s remarks but changed the order.
Trump alleged that the ad had been created “to interfere with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court,” which is weighing a legal challenge to several of Trump’s tariffs.
This is a breaking news story. Updates to follow.
