Andrew Johnston - Telling the Truth about Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan hasn’t been President of the United States since the late 1980s, years before the internet was a thing.

But in recent weeks the Republican and Conservative icon has become a major talking point in North American politics…at the center of an increasingly bitter trade dispute between two formerly close allies, Canada and the United States.

It’s become the ultimate narrative cage fight to wrest control over Ronald Reagan’s economic legacy- Reaganomics- pitting two of the continent’s most successful and pugilistic conservative populists against each other, in a no-holds-barred public relations battle royale.

US president Donald Trump and Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

Trump suspended trade talks with Canada due to the Reagan imbroglio and threatened to slap an additional 15% tariff on all Canadian goods entering the US.

So why all the fuss about Ronald Reagan? What was Reaganomics?  And why does Ronald Wilson Reagan still matter 20 plus years after his death nearly 40 years after he left the political stage?

The cross-border controversy that erupted over former US President Ronald Reagan’s legacy stemmed from an anti-tariff ad paid for by  the Doug Ford-led Ontario government,  that ran on US tv networks during prime time.

 The minute-long ad featured   Reagan speaking into a microphone and stating his opposition to the use of tariffs as part of trade policy.

The clips of Reagan were taken from a national presidential radio address he delivered in 1987 at the height of a trade dispute with Japan.

In it, Reagan argues against protectionist policies and champions free and fair trade.

The ad drew the ire of Trump who claimed it was a big lie designed to mischaracterize Reagan’s true beliefs about tariffs and trade.  Trump insisted Reagan “loved tariffs for our country and its national security.” He said that the ad fraudulent… a dirty Canadian trick intended  to bamboozle American voters and influence US Supreme Court Justices about to judge a major federal tariff case.

Since becoming president in January 2025, Donald Trump has made tariffs the centerpiece of US trade policy and sparked a trade war with Canada by levying them on Canadian goods. Evidently Trump wants  the US public to believe his views are aligned with  one of the most popular and transformative presidents, Democrat or Republican, in US history, Ronald Reagan. 

So, who was the real Ronald Reagan, the B movie actor who became Great Communicator?  

What did one of the most successful politicians of his generation, the man who never lost an election, the one-time New Deal Democrat who became the standard bearer of the Conservative movement, the hard-line Cold Warrior turned peacemaker who supported brutal proxy wars in Central America. The president who called Apartheid in South Africa morally wrong and yet vetoed the comprehensive Anti- Apartheid Act of 1986 which Congress had passed with bipartisan support. The self-proclaimed tax cutter who as president raised taxes nearly a dozen times to balance the books, the free-market champion who bailed out and subsidized corporations, what did this man so full of contradictions actually think?  How should we understand Ronald Reagan? And why does he continue to play such an outsized role in contemporary politics?

To help us answer some of these questions about Ronald Reagan, I’m joined by Carleton University Professor of History Andrew Johnston an expert on US politics at Carleton University.