Since Donald Trump began his second term, Canadian politician Doug Ford has become one of the loudest international voices to contest the US president’s “America First” trade policy.
The Ontario premier is now a ubiquitous presence on US cable news as he pushes back against US tariffs on Canadian goods while telling Americans that “Canada is not for sale” in the face of Trump’s threat to turn it into the 51st state.
Here’s how the leader of Canada’s most populous province became one of the standard bearers of Canada’s response to the Trump administration.
A political family
Ford comes from a prominent political family in Ontario. His father served in the provincial legislature and his older brother Rob Ford was a colorful figure in Toronto city politics for over a decade.
After Rob Ford left his seat on Toronto’s city council when he became mayor in 2010, Doug Ford ran and took his place. Three years into the elder Ford brother’s tenure as mayor of Toronto, however, Rob was caught on video smoking crack cocaine.
Though Rob Ford admitted to using the drug, he refused to resign, and the scandal seriously damaged his reputation and derailed his term as mayor. After spending time in drug rehabilitation, Rob Ford managed to return to his old seat on Toronto’s city council in 2014 before his death from cancer in 2016.
Two years later, Doug Ford contested and won the 2018 race for leader of Ontario’s center-right Progressive Conservatives, leading the party to victory the same year and assuming the premiership.
Brash rhetoric and bipartisanship
When Ford first ran to lead Ontario’s government, he would tout his extensive business experience and denounce elites who drink “their little glass of champagne with their pinkies up in the air.”
Ford’s brash rhetoric and election night pledge to end the government’s “party with the taxpayers’ money” drew numerous comparisons to Trump. Ford told Toronto’s CityNews in 2016 that a Trump presidency would be far more preferable to having “Crooked Hillary” in the White House.
Yet over the arc of his premiership, Ford’s efforts at bipartisanship have buoyed his popularity in Ontario. During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, he developed a cordial relationship with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, particularly with Chrystia Freeland, who was deputy prime minister at the time.
“All the premiers love Chrystia Freeland,” Ford told reporters in 2023. “I just love her a little more than the rest of the premiers.”
Canada’s anti-tariff spokesman
The premier’s re-election campaign, in which he won his third consecutive term in late February, plainly asked voters for “a strong, four-year mandate” to protect Ontario from Trump’s tariffs, according to a January press release from his party.
Ford is uniquely sensitive to the effects of Trump’s protectionism. His province’s economy is highly integrated with the United States: its electrical grid is connected with its southern neighbor, and Ontario trades hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods with the US every year.
Ford has sought to broadcast that close relationship through his many back-to-back TV appearance in the past months, often beginning his interviews with the refrain that “Canadians love Americans.”
When he isn’t speaking to reporters, Ford has placed Ontario’s message in the commercial breaks. He launched an ad campaign in December aimed at US consumers, reminding them of Ontario, their “ally to the North,” and eager trading partner. On March 9, Ford told CBS that Ontario would launch a new series of ads attacking Trump’s tariff policy.
Asked by reporters how much he’s willing to spend on advertisements, Ford claimed on Tuesday that Ontario’s ad campaign would ultimately save Canada “tens of billions of dollars” by stymying the trade war.
After Trump announced tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Ford was among several Canadian premiers who ordered US alcohol off provincial liquor store shelves and encouraged his constituents to “Buy Canadian.”
The 60-year-old has also taken aim directly at one member of Trump’s inner circle, tearing up a provincial contract with Elon Musk’s satellite internet provider Starlink and banning American companies from working with Ontario’s government.
But few have adopted Ford’s theatrical flair or gone to the same lengths to show their displeasure with Trump’s tariffs. He often dons a “Canada Is Not For Sale” baseball cap reminiscent of Trump’s trademark MAGA hats.
In the face of Trump’s claims that Canada is ripping Americans off, Ford has offered colorful threats of his own. At a recent press conference, the premier said that he’d shut off Ontario’s electricity exports to the US “with a smile on [his] face” if the Trump Administration escalated tariffs.
But on Tuesday, he backed down on his 25% surcharge on electricity exports to three US states, saying it was suspended “temporarily” after speaking with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
“Tit for tat, I’ve agreed to suspend temporarily, and we always have that tool in our tool kit until we sit down,” Ford told reporters in Toronto, before adding that if Trump “continues with the aluminum and steel” tariffs, Canada’s government “will respond dollar for dollar, tariff for tariff.”
Throughout his media crusade, Ford has tried to appeal to the American people, and has urged the US to come back to the negotiating table.
