Rumors of Trump tariff on Blue Jays wins are unsubstantiated

"Donald Trump says the loss to the Toronto Blue Jays was disgusting. He announced that beginning October 12th any strikes thrown by a Canadian team will be charged a 20% tarrif on the most expensive ticket to that game which will be paid by the Canadian team ," says an October 9, 2025 Facebook post.

Similar posts claiming Trump said he would invoke a tax on Canadian victories spread across Facebook throughout the American League Championship Series (ALCS), where the Blue Jays notched a come-from-behind victory to advance to the 2025 World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Some of the posts further claim that the money from the levies will go towards youth American baseball, while others mention salacious rumors about MLB officials.

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Screenshot of a Facebook post taken October 23, 2025

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Screenshot of a Facebook post taken October 23, 2025

Relations between the United States and Canada have frayed since the start of Trump's trade war on Canadian goods, with tensions between the two countries heightening sports rivalries and triggering boos at games. 

AFP has previously fact-checked online misinformation stemming from these tensions, and the Canadian Press debunked a fabricated Trump post decrying the Blue Jays' postseason success.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney expressed excitement for the World Series to the US president earlier in October, while Trump acknowledged an anti-tariff ad from Ontario province that aired during a broadcast of Toronto's series-clinching ALCS game (archived here).

No record exists, however, of Trump announcing a penalty against the Canadian baseball team's wins, according to an AFP review of White House statements, Trump's Truth Social account and FactBa.se, a resource that maintains a database of the US president's public remarks.

The Factba.se database does not return any results for "Blue Jays" when going through Trump's comments. Only one video -- a speech from September 2020 --shows Trump referencing both "Canada" and "baseball" (archived here).

Searches for news stories about a tax on Canadian wins also do not yield any matches except for a sports satire website, which originally published a humorous article about a tariff on Blue Jays games in June 2025 (archived here).

Dubious sourcing

It was not clear whether any of the claims on Facebook were intended in jest, but some commenters were left wondering about the posts' authenticity. One user responded, "It's hard to distinguish what is real and what is fake anymore."

The links attached to posts often lead to articles on suspicious websites full of ads and garbled text.

One page bears similarities to misinformation-laden accounts that an AFP investigation found were part of a network in Southeast Asia churning out false, AI-generated content on North American sports.

While there is no evidence of a US tariff added to Blue Jays tickets, Canadian media previously reported that Yankee Stadium had restricted sales for its postseason games to local and neighboring state fans. The report noted that Toronto employs a similar policy, which only allows Canadian-based sales for seats at the team's Rogers Stadium.

Ticket sales for the seven World Series games scheduled for Toronto and Los Angeles and beginning October 24 are sold out. Resales available on Ticketmaster do not mention fees similar to those described in the social media posts (archived here and here).

AFP reached out to Ticketmaster for comment, but a response was not forthcoming.

Read more of AFP's reporting on misinformation in Canada here.