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When President Donald Trump spoke about making Canada the 51st US state, it sounded like a joke, but to Canadian leaders it sounds like part of an increasingly serious threat and plan.
“President Trump wants to put us in a state that is far more economically weakened to end up annexing us,” Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Jolly told CNN’s Christian Amanpool last week.
Certainly, the idea that a country will take over its neighbouring democracy will be wary of a small country, especially after years of seeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but Trump has not suggested the use of military force.
At the same time, he continues to spark the prospects that the US will absorb Canada.
“The artificial lines of separation that were drawn out years ago are finally gone,” Trump said. He also promised that Canada could maintain its national anthem “O Canada.”
That was a “good policeman” post. Trump also poses a threat in that period before Ford retreated from a threatening surcharge for electricity sold across the border to Americans in Minnesota, Michigan and New York. Instead, Ford meets with U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick. Trump proposed returning to doubles that was threatened by tariffs on steel and aluminum. Read more about the tariff threats.
Canadians are confused and hurt by Trump’s trade war
“This is an absolute mess created by one person, and it’s Donald Trump,” Ford told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday. Ford added that Canada is by no means a nation and “not for sale.”
In a social media post, Trump also added demands to the escalating, unparalleled trade war, where Canada drops sudden tariffs on U.S. dairy exports, but CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale points out that Trump’s complaints are virtually untrue.
From Dale: These high tariffs only occur after the US crashes into a certain Trump-related amount of tariff-free dairy sale to Canada each year. And, as the US dairy industry recognizes, the US has not reached the maximum allowed zero in any category of dairy products.
“It obviously goes under his skin,” Ford said of the dairy fees. “Let’s sit down and talk. He adds that the trade deals Trump negotiated during his first term is just as simple as that, claiming to negotiate a Mexican-Canada agreement with the US,” he added.
It is not clear why it sparked Trump’s obsession with making Canada a 51st state, but there are several theories.
The New York Times pointed to the bankruptcy of two hotels he named in Toronto in 2016 and in Vancouver in 2021, looking for reasons why Trump turned his American neighbors north.
There are also photos of the virus from Trump’s first term. There is also Melania Trump preparing to peck Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the cheek, but the video revealed that it was merely a greeting.
Watch Melania Trump’s moment with Trudeau at the G7 Summit
But Donald Trump’s old tweets don’t have many years of frustration or complaints.
“This isn’t just a personal issue between Prime Minister Trudeau and President Trump. That’s more than that,” Jolie told Amanpool. “It’s more than just political rhetoric. It’s a fundamental threat,” she said, adding that one outcome would be a breakdown of barriers to trade between Canada and close ties with Europe.
During his first term, Trump spent a lot of time bragging about the USMCA. This is a trade agreement he negotiated but has been broken by imposing new tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
Most Americans may not think much of Trump’s idea of turning Canada into a nation, but as anyone who has seen a boo in the NHL game or has seen the removal of liquor from the Canadian shelves tell you, they take this very seriously.
No one in the US talks about invasion forces, but most Canadians (63%) say they should take Trump seriously in a survey conducted by Leger for the Canadian Research Association. More than half say they will protect Canada from military aggression.
More importantly, there is a noticeable decline in the number of Canadians who are looking favorably at the US, starting from over 50% in June to over 50% today.
Canada’s population exceeds the population of California, the most populous US, and if it were recognized by the US as a single entity rather than 10 separate states, it immediately overturns the political equilibrium of today’s nearly equally divided US systems.
The Constitution makes it relatively easy to welcome states to the United States, but that hasn’t happened since 1959, when both Hawaii and Alaska became states.
Adding these two states roughly at the same time helped us maintain the US equilibrium. At the time, Alaska had left for Democrats, while Hawaii was heading for Republicans, according to Senate history. That’s the opposite of today’s political painting.
Both were small states, and both held a referendum to ensure that local voters agreed to become state. First of all, it is a deliberately a bilingual country, and Trump recently declared English as the US language.
“We were part of the British Empire because we didn’t want to be America,” Jolie told Amanpool.
