Does Donald Trump want to annexe Canada?
The US President-elect at a dinner with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seemingly joked about making Canada America’s 51st state.
Trudeau made the trip after Trump threatened to impose tariffs on goods coming in from Canada.
But what happened? And why were some actually worried about it at one point?
Let’s take a closer look:
What happened?
Trump and Trudeau dined at the President-elect’s Mar-a-Lago Estate in Florida on Friday.
Joining Trump and Trudeau at dinner were Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Trump’s pick to lead the Interior Department, and Mike Waltz, Trump’s choice to be his national security adviser.
Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico if they don’t stop what he called the flow of drugs and migrants across their borders with the United States.
Trump wrote on social media last week that he would impose a 25 per cent tax on all products entering the US from Canada and Mexico as one of his first executive orders.
It was Trudeau who requested the meeting in a bid to avoid tariffs.
The Canadian prime minister tried to convince Trump that the northern border is nothing like the US southern border with Mexico.
According to Fox News, Trudeau told Trump that levying a 25 per cent tariff would destroy the Canada’s economy.
Trump then responded, “So your country can’t survive unless it’s ripping off the US to the tune of $100 billion?”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau travelled to Palm Beach, Florida to meet US President-elect Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence. (Photo: X/Justin Trudeau)
Trump then indicated to Trudeau if that was the case then Canada should become America’s 51st state.
That led to nervous laughter from the Canadian prime minister and his aides, sources told the outlet.
Trump added that though prime minister is a more lofty title, Trudeau could be governor of the 51st state.
The US-Canada relationship
Canada is a crucial ally for the US.
According to CBC, Ottawa provides the US with around four million barrels of oil per day.
Canada also has a reserve of key minerals used in everything from clean energy and smartphones to military defence systems, fertilisers and medical equipment.
The leading mining nation has some of the world’s largest deposits of minerals.
This gains even more significance in the backdrop of China banning the export of rare minerals to the US.
Canada is also the top export destination for 36 US states.
Nearly $2.7 billion worth of goods and services cross the border each day. Canada sold $170 billion worth of energy products last year to the US.
About 60 per cent of US crude oil imports are from Canada, and 85 per cent of US electricity imports as well.
Canada is a key ally of the United States. Representational image
Canada is also the largest foreign supplier of steel, aluminum and uranium to the US and has 34 critical minerals and metals that the Pentagon is eager for and investing for national security.
About 77 per cent of Canada’s exports go to the US.
At the dinner, Kristen Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., said America’s trade deficit with Canada was also raised.
Hillman, saying the US had a $75 billion trade deficit with Canada last year noted a third of what Canada sells into the US is energy exports and prices have been high.
“Trade balances are something that he focuses on so it’s important to engage in that conversation but to put it into context,” Hillman said.
“We are one-tenth the size of the United States so a balanced trade deal would mean per capita we are buying 10 times more from the US than they are buying from us. If that’s his metric we will certainly engage on that.”
‘President was joking’
Canadian Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc has dismissed the comments.
LeBlanc, who attended the Friday dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, said Trump made the remarks in jest.
“The president was telling jokes. The president was teasing us. It was, of course, on that issue, in no way a serious comment,” LeBlanc, whose responsibilities include border security, told reporters in Ottawa.
LeBlanc described it as a three-hour social evening at the president’s residence in Florida on a long weekend of American Thanksgiving. “The conversation was going to be light-hearted,” he said.
He called the relations warm and cordial and said the fact that “the president is able to joke like that for us” indicates good relations.
“The prime minister of course spoke about the importance of protecting the Canadian economy and Canadian workers from tariffs, but we also discussed with our American friends the negative impact that those tariffs could have on their economy, on affordability in the United States as well,” LeBlanc said in Parliament.
On Tuesday, Trump appeared to continue with the joke, posting on his Truth Social platform an AI-generated image of himself standing on a mountain with a Canadian flag next to him with the caption
“Oh Canada!”
Gerald Butts, a former top adviser to Trudeau and a close friend, said Trump has done this before.
“Trump used the ”51st State” line with Trudeau a lot during his first term,” Butts wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “When someone is trying to get you to freak out, don’t. #protip”
But not everyone thinks this is a laughing matter.
No laughing matter
According to Politico, Canadian nationalists have long warned against their country becoming the 51st state.
The topic came up amid tense national debate over continental free trade that dominated the 1988 election.
At the time, the Free Trade Agreement between the US and Canada had been negotiated and signed by President Ronald Reagan, as per The New York Times.
At the time, the Canadian government was for the deal, while the Liberals and the New Democrats alleged that the deal would turn Canada into a “51st state.”
The election between John Turner and Brian Mulroney resulted in a massive win for the Conservatives and forever altered Canadian politics.
The deal took effect on January 1, 1989 and in the words of historian Norman Hillmer, signalled “a final recognition of Canada’s inevitable destiny as a North American nation.”
More recently, when the Canada-US free trade deal expanded to include Mexico, Canada got what it wanted.
Trudeau’s government successfully employed a “Team Canada” approach during Trump’s first term in office when the free trade deal between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico was renegotiated.
But Trudeau’s minority government is in a much weaker position politically now and faces an election within a year.
Poilievre, Canada’s opposition leader, said the tariffs would harm Americans.
“The president-elect was elected on a promise to make America richer. These tariffs would make America poorer,” Poilievre said after meeting with Trudeau.
Poilievre said the US would be wise to do more free trade with its best friend and closest ally.
‘Mexico must be respected’
Trudeau returned home after the dinner at Mar-a-Lago club in Florida without assurances Trump would back away from threatened tariffs on all products from the major American trading partner.
Trump called the talks “productive” but signaled no retreat from a pledge that Canada says unfairly lumps it in with Mexico over the flow of drugs and migrants into the United States.
Canada’s ambassador to the US, Kirsten Hillman, said on Sunday that “the message that our border is so vastly different than the Mexican border was really understood.” Hillman, who sat at an adjacent table to Trudeau and Trump, said Canada is not the problem when it comes to drugs and migrants.
On Monday, Mexico’s president rejected those comments.
“Mexico must be respected, especially by its trading partners,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said. She said Canada had its own problems with fentanyl consumption and “could only wish they had the cultural riches Mexico has.”
Flows of migrants and seizures of drugs at the two countries’ border are vastly different. US customs agents seized 43 pounds of fentanyl at the Canadian border during the last fiscal year, compared with 21,100 pounds at the Mexican border.
Most of the fentanyl reaching the US — where it causes about 70,000 overdose deaths annually — is made by Mexican drug cartels using precursor chemicals smuggled from Asia.
On immigration, the US Border Patrol reported 1.53 million encounters with migrants at the southwest border with Mexico between October 2023 and September 2024.
That compares to 23,721 encounters at the Canadian border during that time.
With inputs from agencies
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Publish date : 2024-12-03 22:37:00
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