President Donald Trump is worried. Besides the recent concerns he expressed about the state of his soul, he fears the Supreme Court will strip him of his tariff privileges. We know this because he had a temper tantrum upon hearing that Ontario had produced a television advertisement featuring President Ronald Reagan criticizing tariffs — a response that was revealing, both about his mindset and strategy, and about how MAGA has turned away from Reagan’s once-mythic legacy.
The commercial itself was simple and effective. Against bucolic and urban images of industry and humanity, Reagan begins in his unmistakable voice, “When someone says ‘Let’s impose tariffs on foreign imports,’ it looks like they’re doing the patriotic thing.” For a certain swath of Americans old enough to remember his optimism and storytelling — and to ignore the extensive damage he did to the country — hearing his voice doubtless carries them back to a gentler time. Excerpted from a 1987 radio address, the remarks warn against protectionism broadly. (In the full five-minute address, Reagan also condemns pending congressional trade legislation aimed at Japan.)
Trump, a master of modern media, must have immediately recognized the ad’s power. He took to Truth Social, accusing Ontario — and Canada more broadly — of “cheating” and “trying to illegally influence the United States Supreme Court in one of the most important rulings in the history of our Country.” He continued, “They fraudulently took a big buy ad saying that Ronald Reagan did not like Tariffs, when actually he LOVED TARIFFS FOR OUR COUNTRY, AND ITS NATIONAL SECURITY.” Trump was so mad that he slapped an additional 10% tariff on Canadian goods, which came on top of the 35% he had already imposed. He also declared the bilateral trade talks over.
The high court is scheduled to hear arguments in the case brought by some small businesses and other groups who claim the president exceeded his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) in imposing tariffs. In August, the administration lost the case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, but they temporarily stayed the decision pending the Supreme Court appeal, which was accepted by the justices with lightning speed.
Trump’s notion that, without Ontario’s ad, the Supreme Court justices wouldn’t know about Reagan’s free trade philosophy is unintentionally hilarious. Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, worked in the Reagan administration. Justice Neil Gorsuch’s mother was an infamous member of his cabinet. All of the court’s conservatives were schooled in the Reagan Revolution philosophy of free markets. They don’t need the premier of Ontario to instruct them on the subject.
The court’s decision will have massive effects on the American — and the world — economy. So far, it’s relatively unclear if the conservative majority will follow their usual pattern of rubber stamping anything the president wants to do. Since Trump began erratically imposing tariffs, the markets have held steady, and businesses have more or less been in a holding pattern, waiting to see if his chaotic tariff regime will remain in place, or if the court will end it. (On a more cynical level, it’s likely that some of the justices’ wealthy friends and benefactors are not enamored of Trump’s policies.)
You do have to wonder if they might be persuaded that Trump should not have this unilateral power, having shuttered trade talks and imposed tariffs just because he was mad about an advertisement. Likewise, the president’s tariffs on Brazil over its own Supreme Court ruling against his buddy, former president Jair Bolsonaro, might strike some of them as a bit unseemly. It certainly appeared to hit the Senate that way; this week, the body unexpectedly voted on a bipartisan basis to block the tariffs. Both of those examples, among dozens of others, showcase Trump’s capricious use of tariffs as a tool of petty manipulation and revenge — and they make a compelling argument to the justices of the need to deny him unilateral power to reorder the world economy according to his whims.
Trump is well aware of how Reagan was long held up as something of a god among Republicans, and Trump himself went to great lengths to suck up to him when he was president, albeit to little avail.
Trump is well aware of how Reagan was long held up as something of a god among Republicans, and Trump himself went to great lengths to suck up to him when he was president, albeit to little avail. In 1987, Trump had a big idea about foreign policy and trade, and he took out full page ads stating what is now his stale, familiar refrain about other countries ripping off the United States and laughing at us. You have to wonder if Reagan might have been talking about him when he said this in his address congratulating Canadians on their election in 1988:
We should beware of the demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends — weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world — all while cynically waving the American flag. The expansion of the international economy is not a foreign invasion; it is an American triumph, one we worked hard to achieve, and something central to our vision of a peaceful and prosperous world of freedom.
Imagine what Trump would do if someone were to let it be known that Reagan was also a big fan of immigration and free trade agreements. As historian Rick Perlstein pointed out in his book “Reaganland,” Reagan even dreamed of open borders for people and commerce alike.
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The Canadian ad seems to have come to Trump’s attention from the Reagan Foundation, which oversees the former president’s library. You would think that they, of all people, would be so protective of Reagan’s legacy and insist upon his beliefs being portrayed truthfully. Instead the foundation raised a big stink, saying they hadn’t given permission to the admakers to use excerpts of the speech — which was in the public domain, so they had no say in the matter — and insisting that it misrepresented him. In fact, the ad was true to Reagan’s views and, according to a New York Times analysis, “faithfully reproduces [his] words.”
The foundation’s reaction was startling. Either its board has gone so MAGA that they have been deluded into believing the man they purport to honor and defend was a big tariff-lover, or they are so terrified of Trump that they betrayed Reagan’s legacy in hopes of appeasing the president. Whatever the case, it now appears that most of Trump’s followers have left Ronald Reagan and what he stood for behind. They no longer have any interest in or loyalty to the conservative movement he helped create. Its remains are mere artifacts of what has come to seem like an ancient civilization.
The politicians, activists and thinkers who built that movement in the wake of World War II and the anti-communist fervor that swept the country spent many decades educating their followers in the ideology and dogma of conservative thought. They worked in the shadow of what scholars and commentators called “the liberal consensus” that was formed around the New Deal and, later, the civil rights revolution. Slowly but surely, these conservatives accumulated influence and allies, and they finally reached the zenith of their political power with Reagan’s 1980 election as president.
After he was gone, they worked to secure the movement’s enduring power by consciously turning Reagan into a mythic figure whose ideas would live on in perpetuity. They set out to name as many schools, roads, bridges, buildings and even airports after him as they could. They put up statues and encouraged every Republican politician to evoke his name at any opportunity.
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Now, less than a decade after Trump was first inaugurated president in 2017, most of it is lying in rubble.
Many of the staunch Reaganites who once believed in free markets, small government, private enterprise, international institutions and the “Pax Americana” guarantor of global security are now MAGA aficionados, enthusiastically endorsing every scheme Trump comes up with, from state capitalism to trade wars. Unlike the movement Reagan represented, there’s no long term education project, no underlying ideology, no commitment to principles. One day the administration is full force America First isolationism, and the next finds it blowing up boats full of civilians in international waters, with the president proclaiming “to the victors go the spoils.”
Does that erratic philosophy sound like something that can last? If the conservative movement that endured for decades can be stripped, virtually overnight, of everything but the ugly underbelly of crude racism and revanchist anger that fueled it, what are the chances that MAGA will outlive Trump?
Seeing a movement that was as vibrant as the conservative movement toppled so quickly by a shallow demagogue should give those who love democracy and human progress hope. If Ronald Reagan couldn’t go the distance, Donald Trump certainly can’t.
