Jesse Kline: Doug Ford is right, time to hit Trump back hard

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, left, and U.S. President Donald Trump Photo by Jack Boland/Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network; Samuel Corum/Getty Images

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Last year, both Mark Carney and Doug Ford campaigned on being the best candidate to take on U.S. President Donald Trump, but until the prime minister abruptly walked away from trade talks on Friday, only Ontario’s premier had the spine to stand up to the bully next door. His suggestions for how to deal with the current crisis should not be dismissed.

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Scrolling through Trump’s Truth Social feed this week is like drunkenly stumbling through an alternate universe. One will find talk of his “very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea,” alongside ad hominem attacks against Ford (“the less charismatic, intelligent, and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great, Rob Ford”); photos of him and Kim putting on their best dictator faces with maps showing Lake Ontario renamed “Lake America.”

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Clearly, Ontario’s sometimes boisterous leader has gotten under the president’s skin. But while the war of words between Queen’s Park and the White House won’t move the needle on trade, Ford’s proposed retaliatory measures almost certainly will.

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Ford said on Monday that following the imposition of 50 per cent tariffs on $29 billion worth of Canadian goods, “nothing should be off the table,” including taxing or limiting the export of oil, electricity and critical minerals. This is a strategy that’s been employed before and has succeeded in getting the Trump administration’s attention.

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In early 2025, in response to the first round of tariffs, Ford instituted a 25 per cent surcharge on electricity exports to the U.S. The premier eventually backed down after Trump threatened additional tariffs and the administration invited him to a meeting in Washington, D.C., which Ford saw as an “olive branch.”

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That was a miscalculation on Ford’s part, as a similar trade war that Trump precipitated with China around the same time was blunted due to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s refusal to cave to American pressure. Not only did China respond to Trump’s initial 10 per cent tariff by escalating its own levies on U.S. goods to a high of 125 per cent, it placed export restrictions on a bunch of rare earth elements, which American industry relies on.

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Trump responded by de-escalating the trade war, and has been walking on eggshells around President Xi ever since. Even his latest round of sanctions against Iran, which the administration dubbed “Economic D-Day,” noticeably excluded major measures directed at China, despite its Communist government single-handedly keeping Iran’s terrorist regime afloat by buying most of its oil.

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Trump claims that “we don’t need Canada,” but this — like his made up stat that Canada does “95 per cent of their business with the U.S., with us, the exact opposite” — is BS. The U.S. relies on Canada for half its aluminum, which is essential for producing cars, appliances and other goods.

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America also imports around four-million barrels of Canadian oil a day. In 2024, Canada accounted for 62 per cent of U.S. crude imports, according to the American Petroleum Institute. Not only does this help fuel the American economy, it is purchased at a steep discount compared to European Brent and American West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude.

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At the very least, raising the cost of Western Canadian Select oil so it cannot be purchased by Americans for less than the WTI spot price would serve to put inflationary pressure on U.S. consumers, while providing little incentive for customers to seek alternate suppliers in the short term.