Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Thursday that he hopes Republicans lose control of both the U.S. House and Senate in the coming midterm elections, arguing that voters should hold President Donald Trump responsible for intensifying the trade fight with Canada.
“Hopefully, he’s going to lose the Senate. He’s going to lose Congress. I hope so, and hold him accountable,” Ford said.
He quickly added that Canada would not involve itself in the American vote. “But we’ll see how that goes. We aren’t going to interfere in the U.S. election,” Ford continued.
Ford has emerged as one of Trump’s sharpest Canadian critics, accusing the president of trying to pull Ontario companies and jobs south of the border.
“He’s not reliable at all,” Ford said. “He could make a deal today and then change his mind. And we’ve seen that over and over again.”
Despite his criticism, Ford said he believes Trump still wants to strike an agreement before the midterms and urged Canada to get back to the bargaining table quickly.
“I truly believe President Trump wants a deal before the midterms,” Ford said. “I could be wrong, but I think it’s best that we sit down and get a deal.”
The remarks followed a new escalation in the trade dispute, with the U.S. moving to ban some Canadian dairy products and motorcycles, along with most alcoholic beverages, after Canada’s retaliatory tariffs took effect on roughly $20 billion worth of American goods.
Trump has also pushed to strip Canadian products from major long-term U.S. government contracts.
Last year, Trump abruptly halted trade talks with Canada after Ontario aired an anti-tariff television ad in the U.S. that featured former Republican President Ronald Reagan’s criticism of tariffs.
The trade war has fueled an increasingly personal back-and-forth between Trump and Ford.
Ford took aim at Trump for displaying a portrait of Reagan near his desk while supporting tariffs that Reagan had opposed, telling The Associated Press that Reagan would be “throwing up on him from the picture if he knew what was going on.”
Trump, meanwhile, has criticized Ford as “the less charismatic, intelligent, and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great, Rob Ford.”
The U.S. president further escalated tensions with Canada when he signed an executive order to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America,” a rebranding that Canada does not recognize.
Canada, other international bodies and U.S. states are not forced to follow the renaming, but the order adds to the ongoing tensions between the two countries.
Ford said on Thursday that Trump had unintentionally strengthened Canada by forcing it to cut its dependence on the U.S.
“The only two good things Donald Trump has ever done for Canada” were that “he woke us up” and “he united the country like I’ve never seen before,” Ford said.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney suggested on Thursday that his country may hold off on further retaliation against Trump’s latest trade measures, describing them as “relatively modest” compared to earlier U.S. moves.
He said his government was still studying the U.S. measures and acknowledged they could have significant consequences for companies and industries, but he said that some of the new U.S. tariffs replaced others that the Trump administration had removed.
“We also recognize that, in the context of other things that the U.S. administration has done … that these are relatively modest measures,” Carney said at a cabinet retreat in Banff, Alberta.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
