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Ontario Premier Doug Ford is taking a trip to Texas next week, and packing his pro-trade and anti-tariff messages with him.
Ford will visit Houston, Dallas and the state capital of Austin during the multi-day trip, which was first reported by The Toronto Star.
The premier plans to talk up the importance of Canada-U.S. trade with American business leaders and politicians in the state, and he will push the message that President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada are causing more harm than good.
“President Trump’s tariffs on Canada are a tax on the U.S., costing the economy and families on both sides of the border billions. We are stronger when we work together, and our government is focused on driving economic growth for both our countries,” a statement from Ford’s office reads.
The tariffs on the steel and automobile sectors are hitting Ontario particularly hard.
Canada’s efforts to convince Trump to lift some of the sectoral tariffs were thwarted last October after Ford’s government ran a television advertisement in the United States that featured sound from an anti-tariff speech by former president Ronald Reagan.
Negotiations between representatives for both countries had been making progress but then Trump called off talks, citing the ad and slamming it as “fake.”
Ford pulled the ad off the air, but has always defended the decision to run it and called it “the best ad that’s ever been run.”
The tariffs remain in place and now fresh talks are underway related to the renegotiation of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).
Earlier this month, Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc was in Washington, D.C., and met U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
While the federal government leads the CUSMA negotiations, Ford is continuing his efforts to deepen trade and other ties between Ontario and U.S. states.
His last trip south of the border was to New York in December, where Ford and Governor Kathy Hochul signed an agreement to cooperate on nuclear energy.
During his trip to Texas he will meet with representatives from companies including WM (formerly Waste Management), Westlake Corporation, Waste Connections, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America Inc., Compass Datacenters, Toyota, Hewlett Packard and McKesson, a major healthcare company headquartered in Texas.
On Thursday, Ford will meet with Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican and an ally of Trump.
Abbott was first elected in 2014 and is running for another term this fall, with Trump’s crucial endorsement. Ford and Abbott have not met each other before.
“As he has for the last year, in the lead-up to the renegotiation of CUSMA, Premier Ford continues to meet directly with lawmakers, both Republican and Democrat, at both the national and state levels, to build relationships and share his vision for Fortress Am-Can,” the statement from Ford’s office said.
Fortress Am-Can is Ford’s name for the closer economic and security partnership he wants to see between Canada and the U.S.
The premier won’t be the only Ontario politician stateside next week. His energy and mining minister, Stephen Lecce, will be in Washington on Monday. He’s travelling with a delegation from the Ontario Chamber of Commerce that plans to meet with policymakers and industry associations.
They’re aiming to talk about the importance of maintaining CUSMA and of getting rid of Trump’s tariffs.
