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The United States needs to feel the pain in response to President Donald Trump’s latest trade war escalation, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Monday as he and the president traded insults.
Ford had earlier said on Toronto radio that Trump can “kiss my ass,” after the president threatened further tariffs on the auto and steel sectors that could come into play on Jan. 1.
Ford doubled down at a news conference in Hamilton.
“I have a lot of real estate on my ass, so he has a lot a room to kiss my ass,” Ford said with a smile.
Ford said he was against last week’s proposed trade deal before the Canada-U.S. negotiations fell apart and called for a strong response to new 50 per cent tariffs on $28 billion of Canadian exports. He said Prime Minister Mark Carney has his full support.
“We’ll see how this goes, but he wants to put pain on Canadians,” Ford said of Trump. “We’ll leverage every bit of pain we possibly can on Americans.”
Ford said Monday the province is expanding eligibility for its “Protect Ontario” financing program to workers and businesses affected by the new tariffs.
He said everything is on the table when it comes to retaliation, including cutting off Ontario’s electricity and critical minerals supplies to the United States.
The premier’s comments caught Trump’s attention.
“Lots of ‘bluster’ from Doug Ford, who is the Premier of the Canadian Province of Ontario, but who is better known as the less charismatic, intelligent, and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great Rob Ford,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
In response, Ford said: “the guy’s a loser.”
Ford weighed in on the trade war after remaining quiet for several days while talks between the two countries intensified, until breaking off just before the new tariffs took effect on Saturday.
Carney suspended the trade talks on Friday night, accusing the Trump administration of introducing unacceptable measures including restrictions on Canada’s ability to sign deals with other countries and last-minute demands to restrict Canada’s language and culture protections.
Ford applauded Carney’s decision to walk away from the deal and called for the country’s premiers to stand united.
Ottawa plans to match U.S. tariffs dollar-for-dollar after Labour Day, targeting sectors including steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment and electronics.
Ford said he is considering another surcharge on electricity Ontario sends to 1.5 million customers in Michigan, New York and Minnesota.
When Trump went ahead with his original tariffs against Canada last year, Ford retaliated by implementing a 25 per cent surcharge on electricity to those states. The Trump administration was livid and threatened increased tariffs. But the gambit spurred renewed trade talks and Ontario’s surcharge only lasted a day.
Ford also mused Monday about cutting off electricity altogether to those states and suggested other provinces should do the same.
“We aren’t the only one that sends electricity down to the U.S. New Brunswick does, Quebec does, B.C. does, Manitoba does, just to name a few,” Ford said. “So we need to get together, all together, and decide if we’re going to put surcharges on the electricity. How can we let them take really inexpensive electricity to make goods to compete and take jobs from Canadians?”
Trump, meanwhile, launched his own energy threat on Monday.
“Remember, much of the electricity, oil and gas that Canada gets is transported through the U.S.A.,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Someone should get these clowns to ‘fall in line’ or the consequences for Canada will be far WORSE!”
Ford unleashed a tirade against Trump, calling him a “dictator,” a “bully” and on several occasions, a “loser.”
“As I said before, he’s the type of guy in school that would take your lunch money one day, take your tuque off your head the next day, and then steal your running shoes,” Ford said. “But I’m not going to take any advice off a guy that’s the king of bankruptcies, and he’s actually tariffing his own people, taxing his own people.”
Ford said his message to Americans in the upcoming U.S. midterm elections is: “Don’t vote in a person that’s going to kill your jobs.”
He urged Canadians to protest the latest round of tariffs by buying Ontarian and Canadian products, and warned that the escalating trade tension “is going to hurt.”
“That’s the cost of war,” he said.
Ford also pulled American booze off the shelves of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario in March 2025 in retaliation to Trump’s first volley of tariffs. He has said he would drop the booze ban once Trump drops all tariffs on Canada.
Ford called on Carney to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions standards for Canadian-made cars and make exempt tariff-impacted sectors from federal emissions standards as a way to further help affected industries.
Provincial opposition parties said Ford should recall the legislature to further help Ontarians during the trade war, an idea the premier batted away on Monday.
Queen’s Park will resume its next sitting on Oct. 27.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 24, 2026.
Liam Casey and Maan Alhmidi, The Canadian Press
