Ontario, the most populous province in Canada and the lion of the country’s financial and manufacturing sectors, tore up a $68 million contract with Elon Musk’s Starlink and banned U.S. companies from bidding on tens of billions worth of government contracts.
“Ontario won’t do business with people hellbent on destroying our economy,” said Premier Doug Ford, in a statement posted to X on Monday, referring to President Donald Trump’s tariffs. “Every year, the Ontario government and its agencies spend $30 billion on procurement, alongside our $200 billion plan to build Ontario.
“U.S.-based businesses will now lose out on tens of billions of dollars in new revenues. They only have President Trump to blame.”
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Ford added he was “ripping up” a $68 million (CA$100 million) contract with Musk’s satellite firm Starlink, which was inked in November, to connect 15,000 homes and businesses in remote parts of the province to the internet.
Starlink was scheduled to start delivering the service in June.
Musk, Trump’s biggest financial backer during the election campaign and one of his closest confidants, has been appointed to lead a White House task force that will recommend up to $2 trillion in U.S. federal spending cuts.
Trump launched a trade war over the weekend, announcing 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and most goods from Canada, as well as a 10 percent levy from China.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded hours later with a pledge to implement retaliatory tariffs. Leaders from around the country also began announcing their own measures to counter Trump’s offensive.
Ford, British Columbia Premier David Eby, Québec Premier François Legault, and Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston announced over the weekend that government-run liquor stores in their provinces would stop carrying U.S. products.
Charlie Angus, a member of Canada’s federal parliament, encouraged Canadians to stop consuming U.S. alcohol together and said he wouldn’t miss American beer because “it’s s--t anyways.”
Ford, a businessman who ran his family’s label company and spearheaded its expansion into the United States, also appeared on Monday’s Fox & Friends to warn of the consequences Trump’s trade war could have for the U.S. economy.
He expressed alarm about the risks to the U.S. military, which relies on purchasing minerals like nickel from Canada, and about the interconnectedness of the North American auto industry, in which major firms use supply chains on both sides of the border to build vehicles that are sold in the United States and Canada.
“You use about 21 million barrels [of oil] a day, we ship 4.3 million barrels down,” he told the Fox News morning chat show. “Sixty percent of your energy is relied on Canada. Ontario alone keeps the lights on to 1.5 million homes in New York and Michigan and Minnesota.”
“Just imagine if you didn’t have the 1.2 billion barrels a a year coming into the U.S.,” Ford said.
