Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Monday that Canada should be prepared to cut off electricity and critical minerals to the United States if the trade fight with Trump keeps escalating. He said it in an interview with the Associated Press, two days after Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on roughly $20 billion in Canadian goods took effect. Ontario powers 1.5 million homes and businesses in the US, Ford said, everything is on the table, and he will do whatever it takes. If Trump keeps trying to dismantle Canadian manufacturing, Ford said, he better have a pack of batteries.
He also went after Trump through Ronald Reagan, whose portrait Trump keeps near his desk. Reagan spent his career warning that protectionist tariffs invite retaliation and hurt American consumers. Ford said Reagan would be throwing up on Trump from that picture if he knew what was going on, that he is spinning in his grave, and that Trump should take the photo off the wall because Reagan would be disgusted with him.
Ford said Trump has declared economic war on his closest friend and ally, and that he is underestimating how much pain Canadians are willing to absorb rather than fold. Everyone up there is in, he said, at a fever pitch, and they know sacrifice is coming. Here is what is actually in motion versus what is being threatened.
In motion: the tariffs took effect Saturday, covering about five percent of Canada’s annual exports to the US, from agricultural goods to hockey sticks. Prime Minister Mark Carney announced retaliation dollar for dollar beginning September 8. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has promised further American measures without saying what they are, and told Fox News the administration offered to cut tariffs on steel, autos, and lumber but Canada did not want the deal.
Threatened only: the power. There is no order, no date, and no filing. Ford floated raising electricity prices or stopping exports south, and that is where it stands.
He has pulled this lever before. In March 2025 Ontario put a 25 percent surcharge on electricity exports to the US, then Ford suspended it within days after a call with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, saying the worst thing he could do was hang up on an olive branch. Carney has said electricity is not the first card to play in a trade war.
The reason the threat carries weight at all is how connected the two countries are. More than 35 major transmission lines cross the border, along with 70 oil and gas pipelines. Canada supplied 62 percent of American crude oil imports in 2024. In some form, all 50 states benefit from that energy relationship.
Carney, for his part, has accused Washington of weaponizing economic integration and said Canada was attacked by the tariffs, though he maintains the country has the reserves and resilience to answer.
