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So, the Ontario Reagan ad thing.
As the governor of Ontario, Doug Ford (Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario) produced a 1-minute ad in favor of free trade ad targeted at US residents, with some high-profile airings during some sports events. The ad consists of spliced together sentences of a 1987 Reagan address.
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation claims that "the ad misrepresented Reagans address". The reaction of Trump was to suspend trade negotiations with the Carney (Liberal Party) government of Canada:
I watched the original they linked, and I honestly can not see what their problem is. In the original 5 minute version, there was also a message of "we have introduced duties on semiconductors from Japan because their companies were not competing fairly, but we do not want a general trade war". But having watched both the ad and the address, I agree with the fact-checkers that Reagan was not quoted out of context. The ad agency basically took a five minute speech, of which at least three minutes were a spirited defense of free trade as the foundation of prosperity and condensed it into a one minute defense of free trade.
I understand how the ad would annoy Trump. Reagan is a time-honored hero of his party, and his voiced ideals are in stark contrast to Trump's policies. The message "this man is stepping way out of line of the tradition of his political ancestors" certainly seems a good way to persuade traditional conservative demographics to reconsider Trump.
But for all his annoyance, I think Ontario is basically well within it's rights to use ads to affect US trade policy. Even without Citizens United, the US would be the last country in the Americas to have any standing to object to foreigners interfering, especially if the interference is only attack ads and not coups.
And as far as attack ads go, it is incredibly tame. A clear policy message without any ad hominem jabs or name-calling.
This makes Trump's reaction utterly bizarre to me. Diplomacy sometimes means negotiating with people who would love to murder you and dance on your grave, never mind seeing you voted out of office. Then there is the fact that Canada is not an absolute monarchy, and their federal government does not control its provinces. Assuming that PM Carney has control over Ford would be like assuming that Trump has control over Newsom. If you are willing to walk away from negotiations because of that, then either you were not seriously negotiating before or you emotions are making you irrational.
Even if the ad was paid for by Carney, Trump's reaction would not be appropriate for an adult. It seems that he is mentally sorting people into two buckets, the ones who support him and are loyal to him, and the ones who are opposed to him. This is basically the world view of a toddler. Reality is more complex. Of course Canada would love nothing more than the US electing Democrat majorities in the mid-term and them killing Trump's tariffs. Presumably, Trump in turn would love for Canadians to elect a MAGA fan who is willing to bend over backwards and give Trump all the concessions instead of retaliating. But in the likely event that neither side get what they want, it still makes sense to negotiate.
To me, it seems pretty clear that a mass media campaign like this is directed at the electorate. In Trump's mind, it is meant to influence the SCOTUS. This makes me question his world model even more. What is the proposed mechanism of action? A SC justice is watching a sports event on TV, sees the Reagan free trade ad, gets the message 'tariffs bad' into his head, then decides a case which hinges on what powers Congress can delegate to the president purely based on if he likes how the president has used these disputed powers. It seems that Trump is a victim of the typical mind fallacy here -- just because he could persuaded by a TV ad to make unprincipled changes to his policy to get some desired object-level outcome, he assumes that the minds of justices work the same way. At the risk of likewise typical-minding, I think that he is wrong. Perhaps, some judges are partisan hacks who will rule for or against Trump on general principle. But my model of the median SC judge is someone who cares about the long term policy outcomes and making consistent rulings, rather than someone starting by writing "therefore, Trump's tariffs are legal/illegal" at the bottom of the page according to their leanings and then filling the space above with some legal argument. (Which is kinda what Roe v Wade did.)
In short, if Ontario wanted to influence the SCOTUS, TV ads seem like the worst way to go about it. I would recommend they pay high profile legal scholars to publish in academic journals. Or more cynically, invite some justices to an all-expenses-paid retreat.
That is true. And Trump is well within his right to say fuck you and stop negotiating with a party that finances attacks on him. I think it is absolutely within bounds to require some restrain when it comes to hostile actions and posturing during negotiations. This is negotiation 101 be it nations, companies or individuals - especially if you hold all the cards.
Trump did the same with Zelensky in the past where he also misread the situation. Zelensky was in weak position and came literally to beg for money - but he could not help himself and overplayed his hand. So he got fucked and in turn he fucked his nation - he apparently did not realize that he needs to change his behavior under new administration. Last time Zelensky behaved much better, he even brought his suit.
Now one can still criticize Trump for his style, but it seems to be working. He was able to negotiate peace between India and Pakistan, he managed peace between Israel and Hamas, he managed peace between Armenia–Azerbaijan, he presides over cooling of tensions between Cambodia and Thailand and he even turned Modi and Xi Jinping against Putin with his latest oil embargo. It is not as if he is just a buffoon without results.
I think that the US has sound strategic reasons to supply Ukraine, and that these are orthogonal to how much Zelenskyy is willing to grovel before Trump's throne. I do not think Zelenskyy disrespected Trump in a way that would have harmed him. I can not imagine an opinion piece by the (very pro-Ukraine) liberal media about how Trump was letting Zelenskyy walk all over him by tolerating him wearing his trademark army fatigues.
A typical rational actor does not like to grovel. Making the other party grovel will lower their utility function, so in turn their more tangible demands will be higher. If one buys a house only if the seller is willing to give a blowjob as part of the deal, it seems very likely that one will severely overpay for the house.
Again, there is an optimal amount of aid the US should be willing to give to Ukraine for strategic reasons, and likely other amounts will be less effective.
I do not think India and Pakistan were that keen on a big nuclear war. The US (which is kinda allied to both) probably helped, but I think this is something which the Biden administration would have done just as well.
Regarding Hamas, his strategy was basically to give Nethanyahu the card blanche. This (questionable) victory is Bibi's, not his.
I remain skeptical if Trump really manages to get China and India to forgo cheap Russian fossil fuels. In general, with Trump, the winning move seems to tell him "yes", and continue as you did. Chances are he will either have another good phone call with Putin or a bad phone call with Zelenskyy and go back to not caring about Russian oil exports.
I don't think it is about groveling. In the past countries like Germany or Canada took USA for granted and even outright mocked Trump when he gave his speech as in this example. I am not even US citizen but I do think that other NATO members really held their noses too high, it was as if they were entitled to everything that USA provides either trade or security wise in exchange of mockery and disrespect. I think demanding respect was absolutely in order.
Paradoxically Euros or other western countries do not have problem groveling before Xi Jinping or Saudis or even before Iranian dictators. But suddenly they are too good to show some respect to USA just because they think they can farm internal US political dispute.
I think the actual motivation was that the European leaders understood that Trump doesn't have any actual, real power over the military industrial complex which decides these things. Trump doesn't have the ability to stop the MIC (hell, they don't even tell him the truth about military operations) so who cares what he thinks? Zelensky knew that no matter what he did the flow of materiel was completely outside Trump's control.
Except of course when he did in fact shut off the flow of materiel and intelligence for a week and a half to demonstrate his power over Zelensky, and the next time Zelensky visited the US he wore a suit in deference?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93United_States_relations#Second_Trump_presidency_(2025%E2%80%93present)
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