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President-elect Donald Trump attends the 2024 Senior Club Championship award ceremony at his Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, back in March.
Don’t Panic: 4 Rules for Responding to Trump Threats
Amid all the geopolitical chaos, the best advice of the year: Don’t panic.
As they dined at Mar-a-Lago on a main course of tough, over-cooked tariff talk, President-elect Donald Trump suggested to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — in what the Canadians present later called a joking manner — that Canada might make a good 51st state. Naturally, people freaked out. First, Trump threatens to destroy the Canadian economy with 25% tariffs on everything, and now this? An invasion?
As the breathless coverage spilled over the international media, my colleague Gerry Butts went on Bluesky with a message: “Trump used this 51st state line all the time with Trudeau in his first term. He’s doing it to rattle Canadian cages. When someone wants you to freak out, don’t.”
It is sound advice. Don’t freak out.
Canada is no more going to become the 51st state in the next four years than California, British Columbia, and Oregon are going to break away and become Cascadia. Jokes are not policy.
So what’s up?
Trump is a zero-sum negotiator. He uses the powerful leverage he has to create “I win, you lose” deals. Threats give him a real negotiation advantage before the actual negotiations happen. That is the prerogative of the Big Dog countries, especially those run by strongmen, mercantilist leaders like Trump. Trump threats are simply the expected prelude to any deal. But what is real and what is rhetoric? And how to respond?
Invasion: Rhetoric. Dismiss.
Tariffs: Real. Discuss.
Rule One: Stick With Facts. Don’t get caught up in the torrent of tweets and taunts. Don’t give anything away until the actual negotiations start. Facts are your best friends.
Facts? Really? You might think that since Trump has ushered in the post-fact world, facts are a diminishing currency. That is a dangerous bet. For example, at the root of the 51st state jab are the much more dangerous Trump threats to slap 25% tariffs on all goods coming in from Canada and Mexico. Trump based this threat on what he says is the heavy flow of fentanyl and illegal migrants across the border.
Initially, that threat caused panic. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith immediately went into appeasement mode, telling the CBC’s Power and Politics, “It’s incumbent, I believe, on the federal government, along with all of the provinces, to work together to address those concerns if we want to be able to avoid these devastating tariffs that’ll hurt all of us.”
She’s not wrong that the Trump rhetoric needs to be addressed, which is why Trudeau immediately got on a plane and took his team for a strategic schmooze fest at Mar-a-Lago. Trump prizes personal relationships above all else, so a connection matters.
Rule Two: Don’t Take It Personally. Even though Trump has a long-standing sour relationship with Trudeau — he’s even called the Canadian PM “two-faced” — in Trumplandia, that doesn’t matter. His relationships with people change like the weather in the Rocky Mountains: If you don’t like what is happening, wait five minutes. It will change.
Trump is quick to anger and quick to forget. Can he get over his past irritations with Trudeau? Well, he got over JD Vance comparing him to … that guy who ran Germany in the war. He nominated former rival Marco Rubio, whom he used to mock as “Little Marco,” for secretary of state. Trump doesn’t hold the very grudges he creates, and the best way to get over that is to find a way to make nice, show loyalty, and suck up. That’s what the Trudeau visit was all about. Feelings first. Facts second.
That doesn’t mean giving anything away. And that’s where the facts come in. On fentanyl and border security, the reality is far different than the rhetoric. Canada is hardly a major threat to the US on either issue.
“The facts are hard to deny,” Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s whip-smart ambassador to the US, pointed out on X. “Last year, 0.6% of illegal crossings and 0.2% of fentanyl seizures by US authorities were at the northern border.”
That’s right. Only .2% of fentanyl seizures happened at the Canadian border. If you want to go deeper, check out the latest stats from the US Customs and Border Protection agency, which shows that the problem of fentanyl is largely at the Mexican border, not the Canadian one.
In fact, the CBP’s top official, Troy Miller, has an extensive interview on the US government website about fentanyl coming over the US border. Guess what? He mentions the southwest border 21 times and Mexico specifically seven times. Canada? Not a word. Canada and the northern border are not mentioned a single time. Why? It is simply not a major issue.
Rule Three: Know What Actually Needs Work. On the other hand, illegal migration is a real issue, both internationally and domestically. There is a key section along the US-Canadian border called the Swanton Sector (which covers parts of New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire), and illegal immigration rates there have spiked according to stats from the CBP. But how bad is it? 23,000 arrests were made at the northern border between October 2023 and September 2024. That is up from 10,000 in 2023. Compared to Mexico, where over 47,000 arrests were made in November of this year alone, it’s a trickle (700 were arrested in November in Canada). Still, politically it is an issue Canadians will have to deal with if they want to avoid tariff punishments. Doing nothing is not an option.
Illegal migration is now driving election outcomes in France, Ireland, Germany, and many other places, so this ain’t a surprise. But proportionality matters, and the facts that prove that point can get lost in the storm of threats. It is critical this doesn’t happen.
Rule 4: Follow the Money. There is a high probability that a tariff-driven trade war — or skirmish — is coming very soon, and the facts here will be crucial. After all, high tariffs will hurt the very people Trump represents — namely, American workers. High US tariffs on Canadian goods will raise prices for US consumers and make life for them more miserable. That is a political loss for Trump.
Over 34 US states rely on Canada as their major trading partner, so expect state governors to pressure the White House to ease up on the tariff talk so as not to jeopardize the bilateral trading relationship that sees over US$2.7 billion worth of goods and services crossing the border each day.
To protect that, Canadian leaders will have to think hard about decoupling their trade relationship with Mexico, especially when the new US-Mexico-Canada trade deal gets renegotiated in 2026. The politics of the southern border have always cross-infected the northern one, but if the infection threatens to be economically fatal, there will be a change. The famed three amigos might be reduced to two.
But that is not for right now. Trade deals are not made on social media; they are negotiated face to face, when genuine swaps and deals can happen. Better to build relationships now over dinner, and serve up facts for dessert.
And don’t panic.
It hasn’t even started yet.