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Trade war may push Canada closer to its threatening ally
When Canadian defense expert Philippe Lagassé met with American counterparts in Washington this week, he quickly sensed they had not registered that the mood had shifted in Canada.
“There’s still a lot of emphasis on partnership,” he said. “We should be working together. We should be doing some things together.”
But Lagassé, an associate professor at Ottawa’s Carleton University, had to tell them that things had changed. “That’s hard right now because, politically, that’s just become a lot more difficult.”
Canadians were so angered by Donald Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats that they yanked American bourbon from liquor stores and turned up their noses at American produce. The typically staid hockey fans of Ottawa even booed the US national anthem.
Canadians, who are used to thinking of the Americans as friendly neighbors, are suddenly seeing them as a threat to their sovereignty. A poll this week shows 80% of Canadians support using oil as a weapon in the trade dispute, which would be a dramatic escalation. On Monday, Trump called off the planned 25% tariffs after Justin Trudeau agreed to take measures on the border, but the pause is for just 30 days.
Rattled Canadians are suddenly more committed to enhancing their sovereignty by reducing internal trade barriers, diversifying international trade so the country is less dependent on the United States, and beefing up the military.
Long a NATO laggard
It will need a lot of beef. For decades, Canada has sheltered under the coattails of Uncle Sam.
With oceans on both sides, an impassable ice cap to the north and friendly Americans to the south, there was little public support for military spending and lots of support for spending money on social programs. Even tough-talking Conservative Stephen Harper did little to boost defense spending. Canada is a NATO laggard, spending only 1.37% of GDP on defense — the average across NATO members is 2.71% of GDP — something Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Trump have all complained about. Last year, leaked documents showed that Trudeau told NATO that Canada had no plan to get to 2%, the level all NATO countries have agreed on.
When political circumstances changed, Trudeau laid out a plan to get to 2%, but years of neglect will take time to turn around. Due to recruiting problems, there are only 63,000 people in the Canadian Armed Forces — well below the 71,500 it is supposed to have. Even at full strength, it is tiny compared with the 2 million troops south of the border. To make matters worse, three-quarters of Canadian soldiers are either overweight or obese.
Canada has summoned the will, finally, to spend on defense. Trudeau has promised to reach 2% by 2032. His likely successor, Mark Carney, said Wednesday he would aim for 2030. The defense minister has said we could get there within two years, although quickly rearming would pose logistical challenges.
But it is not clear if Canada's big push will be in partnership with its newly hostile neighbors. After all, if the United States decides to put tariffs on all Canadian exports, driving the country into a deep recession, would Canada want to proceed with the CA$70-billion purchase of 88 F-35A US fighter jets? Or would Ottawa cancel the order and buy fighters from Sweden, which has never threatened annexation? And if Canada’s economy is in free fall, could it afford to buy either?
Pentagon control
And should Canada buy kit from a hostile power? Canada’s military technology is integrated with America’s, so any operations without US approval would be complicated. The F-35 can’t function without its autonomic logistics information system, which is controlled by the Pentagon, which could limit its effectiveness in a showdown with America.
There may be pressure, therefore, to work more closely with other countries — to buy equipment from the Europeans, for example — although the natural inclination of the defense community in Ottawa is to stick with the Americans, whom they see as their friendly big brothers.
“I think there’s going to be a pretty heavy emphasis on the fact that you take Trump at his word, so you buy more American equipment, and you invest more in the US,” says Lagassé. “You try to integrate yourself more deeply into those supply chains, and that’s how you protect yourself. The other side is going to argue, well, now this is too vulnerable. We should try to become less dependent, take a step back.”
Not a lot of choices
But Canadians are limited in their options, says Graeme Thompson, an analyst with Eurasia Group, because at the forefront of military innovation with AI and advanced computing, there are only two real options: China and the US.
“There’s the Chinese ecosystem and there’s the American ecosystem, and basically Canada doesn’t have a choice there. It’s not going to be able to develop its own autonomous tech ecosystem or supply chains. It has to be plugged into the US side of things. There’s a great line, I don’t know who said it, but ‘the US is our best friend, whether we like it or not.’”
Canadians may want their government to do more to assert national sovereignty, but Lagassé doubts that sentiment is strong enough to disrupt the close military cooperation between Canada and the United States.
“The public may want us to do something differently, but … is the public willing to sustain the cost? Is the public’s attention going to be sufficiently focused so that political leaders see gain in pursuing that? Or does it just kind of evaporate once the tariff threat is no longer present?”
Once tempers cool, Canadian politicians will continue to use procurement deals as a way of currying favor with the Americans rather than a way of asserting independence. After all, they are Canada’s best friends, whether they like it or not.
Graphic Truth: Canadian national pride rebounds
Since taking office, Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened the US’s closest ally, Canada, with high tariffs and statehood, sparking a surge of national pride among Canadians. The tension has manifested in symbolic acts of resistance: coffee shops renaming Americanos to “Canadianos” and premiers threatening to ban American products. New polling shows that this defiance isn’t anecdotal.
An Angus Reid poll conducted over the weekend reveals a dramatic shift in Canadian patriotism. Strong patriotic feelings increased from 49% to 59% in just one month. Canadian pride is up 12 points in British Columbia, 13 points in Quebec, nine points in Ontario, and a whopping 15 points in Atlantic Canada. The prairie provinces saw more modest increases, with Alberta up three points and Saskatchewan up four points, while Manitoba experienced a slight decline.
Despite a last-minute deal to delay 25% tariffs, the threat deeply unsettled Canadians. Given the US’s status as Canada's largest trading partner, potential tariffs could trigger a recession and imperil thousands of jobs. Accordingly, perhaps the poll’s most striking finding was that 91% of Canadians now want to reduce dependence on the US, prioritizing national economic independence over reconciliation.
Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre speaks in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, on Dec. 3, 2024.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre goes after fentanyl
Poilievre, who often blames Trudeau for soft-on-crime policies, said he would introduce mandatory life sentences for fentanyl traffickers. “I will lock up fentanyl kingpins and throw away the key. It's like spraying bullets into a crowd — even if you don’t aim, you will kill people. The penalty should be the same as murder.”
Canadian courts have often ruled that mandatory life sentences for any crime violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but Poilievre has said he would override the courts if necessary to get tough on crime.
The proposal comes as the Conservatives search for new messages to use against the governing Liberals. The party has been connecting with voters for two years by launching attacks against Trudeau and the unpopular consumer carbon tax. But Trudeau has announced that he is resigning and his likely successor, former central banker Mark Carney, has promised to get rid of that tax.
The polls have tightened slightly after many months of downward motion for the Liberals, and they are still moving. A poll of Quebecers shows many have suddenly decided to shift their support to the Liberals, and more would do so if Carney is leader.
Expect Poilievre to talk about crime and find new ways to talk about the cost of living, and keep an eye on volatile public opinion.
Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is joined by Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc, Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly, and Minister of Public Safety David McGuinty, as he responds to President Donald Trump's orders to impose 25% tariffs on Canadian imports, in Ottawa, Ontario, on Feb. 1, 2025.
Trump ignites trade war. Will there be a legal response?
On Saturday, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order applying 25% tariffs on all Canadian and Mexican imports, excluding Canadian energy, which will be tariffed at 10%. The order, which takes effect on Tuesday, also imposes a 10% tariff on all Chinese imports. Trump threatened to escalate tariffs further if any of the countries retaliated, which Mexico and Canada have already done.
Canada will apply 25% tariffs on $155 billion of American goods, from orange juice to appliances to car parts, phased in over three weeks. Ottawa will also consider nontariff measures relating to energy and procurement, and provincial liquor monopolies areremoving American alcohol from their shelves. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum also retaliated with “tariff and non-tariff measures in defense of Mexico's interests,” without specifying the rate.
China has responded with plans to implement “countermeasures” and called Trump’s tariffs a “serious violation” of international trade rules, which it will contest before the World Trade Organization.
On what basis did Trump issue the order? Trump expanded the scope of the national emergency he declared on Jan. 20 at the southern border of the United States, due to “the sustained influx of illicit opioids and other drugs” that is “endangering lives and putting a severe strain on our healthcare system, public services, and communities.” It now covers both Canada and China, which he accuses of not doing enough to combat fentanyl production, money laundering, drug gangs, and transnational crime.
Could legal challenges derail Trump’s tariffs? To declare this emergency, Trump invoked the US International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, the National Emergencies Act, or NEA, as well as sections 604 of the Trade Act of 1974 and section 301 of Title 3, United States Code.
But the IEEPA hasnever been used to justify tariffs. It allows for the imposition of sanctions, suchas those imposed by the Biden administration against Russia, which can be invoked immediately. Trump chose the IEEPA because it allowed him to bypass the lengthy investigations and consultations required by other trade laws he invoked during his first term.
It also allows him to claim the tariffs are legal under World Trade Organization rules, as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade’s Article XXI designates a national security exception. President Richard Nixon similarly invoked the Trading with the Enemy Act to impose 10% tariffs after the US quit the gold standard in 1971 to stave off a balance-of-payments crisis.
This may not bode well for a challenge by China before the WTO. But if American courts rule against Trump on his use of the IEEPA, his emergency declaration could be considered invalid, opening the door to penalties under global trade rules.
Finally, there’s the USMCA. A Congressional analysis found that tariffs would violate the tripartite treaty, but with Trump already threatening to withdraw from the agreement, it would appear he does not care. Trump said on Truth Social on Sunday that Americans will feel “SOME PAIN” but that “IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID.”
We’ll be watching to see who might challenge the US president in court – and whether they succeed. Meanwhile, the markets were taking a hit as of early Monday with stock futures lower and the dollar and oil rising.
Exclusive New Poll: US-Canada – Tariff-ied of What’s to Come?
Won’t you be my … frenemy?
It’s not a beautiful day in the North American neighborhood. Two days before the Feb. 1 deadline Donald Trump set to impose tariffs on Canada, Abacus Data and GZERO Media have an exclusive new poll on American attitudes toward their closest ally and neighbor. The upshot? This is the dawn of the new age of the political frenemy. Longtime American allies like Canada have reshaped their view of their largest trading partner into something much more threatening, going from friend to frenemy.
The Abacus Data-GZERO poll surveyed 1,500 Americans on politically radioactive issues like tariffs, fentanyl, and immigration. On the big one, tariffs, 47% of Trump voters support a 25% tariff on Canadian goods, while 67% of Democrats oppose it. Why the split? Republicans see it as a pain-free exercise. Only 19% of Trump voters believe tariffs on Canada will have a negative impact on them, as opposed to 65% of Democrat voters. “It’s striking how many Trump supporters appear unfazed by the impact of tariffs or Canadian retaliation,” says David Coletto, CEO of Abacus. “They may see it as cost-free now, but that blind spot could become a real liability if people start feeling the economic hit.”
Abacus Data
Canadian officials have made an extraordinary effort to convince Americans that punishing Canada with high tariffs will drive up the cost of their goods, but it’s worked about as well as using winter boots to skate on ice. “Everything the American consumers buy from Canada is suddenly going to get a lot more expensive,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told CNN a few weeks ago, using examples like energy. “Canadian energy powers American manufacturing, businesses, and homes,” he said.
Clearly this has not landed with Trump voters, who not only see tariffs as a net benefit to Americans but also believe that Canadians are taking advantage of them. That’s right, even though the free trade deal was negotiated by Ronald Reagan and Trump, somehow crafty ol’ Canada pulled a fast one on both of them. According to the poll, 67% of Trump voters believe the free trade pact benefits Canada “way more” than it does the US. Overall, 50% of Americans believe there is a huge trade deficit between the US and Canada, which means that Americans are basically “subsidizing” their northern neighbor.
Abacus Data
That’s not true, by the way. The trade deficit between the US and Canada is not $250 billion, as Trump repeats, but less than $100 billion, mainly because Canada supplies the US with 24% of its energy, at a discounted price.
On immigration, there is another consequential gap between perception and reality. Fifty-four percent of Trump voters think “millions of illegal immigrants” come from Canada (44% of Americans overall believe this). The reality? It’s about 1% of the total number of immigrants crossing illegally into the US. And Canada just spent another billion dollars to stop that amount in hopes of appeasing Trump into calling off the tariffs.
Finally, on the other tariff trigger point: drugs. Thirty-two percent of Americans believe that a lot of the fentanyl that comes into the US originates in Canada. There are drug labs in Canada, for sure, but they account for less than 1% of the fentanyl that comes from places like Mexico, China, and other countries.
You might think from all this that the US really doesn’t like Canada, but here is the weird part:87% of Americans have a positive or very positive view of Canada, according to the poll. An optimist might see the fact that less than half of Trump supporters want these tariffs as evidence that he doesn’t really have a mandate from his base. So what is it?
“These findings paint a portrait of an American public torn between long-standing goodwill toward Canada and the view that Canada may be getting the better end of existing trade deals,” says Coletto. “On one hand, most Americans describe Canada as an ally … On the other hand, more than half believe Canada benefits ‘way more’ from free trade, echoing President Trump’s narrative that tariffs are needed to level the playing field.”
The partisan difference is notable, but geography matters as well. “Americans in border states register deeper anxiety about the fallout from a potential trade war,” Coletto says. “This underlines the importance of these border communities: Their direct exposure to cross-border trade could serve as a bellwether for how the broader American public will ultimately judge the practicality and fairness of tariffs.”
All this leaves a massive challenge in a very short time: Canadian leaders need to somehow convince Americans — or, more concretely, President Trump — that high tariffs on Canada will hurt Americans.
“The more Canadians can demonstrate that these punitive measures undermine shared prosperity, the likelier they are to sway uncertain or moderate Americans and mitigate the worst outcomes of an escalating trade dispute,” says Coletto. “But we also have to be aware that Trump voters are captive to his rhetoric, and what they think and feel is likely all he cares about.”
This is what the age of the frenemy looks like. Won’t you be my neighbor?
___________
To see the full Abacus Data-GZERO poll and David Coletto’s deep dive into the numbers, please click here.
Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre; Mark Carney, former Governor of the Banks of England and Canada; and Canada's former Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland.
Hot heads, cold comfort: How Trump is upending the race in Canada
There’s an old saying: “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” With the changing of the guards in both the US and Canada, where are these two countries headed?
The short answer? They’re headed for a hot trade war, one made hotter by Donald Trump’s threats to take over Canada by escalating counter-threats from patriotic Canadian leaders who are locked in their own election cycle. The political barometer is rising.
This has upended conventional wisdom about the political landscape in Canada, where the Liberals are in a leadership race (former Banks of Canada and England Governor Mark Carney announced his leadership bid in Edmonton today), and a federal election is likely to kick off at the end of March.
Just weeks ago, it was all about Justin Trudeau and his legacy. The Conservatives, led by Pierre Poilievre, have been up in the polls, with a lead ranging from 20 to 25 points. That may well hold, but the election is no longer only about Trudeau. It is also about Trump’s threat to take over Canada and which leader has the best response.
Outside threats have a way of healing some internal divisions and, already, we’ve seen two long-time former prime ministers, Stephen Harper, a conservative, and Jean Chretien, a Liberal, speak out forcefully against Trump’s threat. That catalyzed all political leaders to boost their own tough patriotic talk aspolls show the vast majority of Canadians reject Trump’s expansionist dream.
A common outside threat doesn’t help an opposition party looking to focus on domestic issues, but it also creates new internal divisions.
For example, Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford believes Canada must retaliate against the US with every weapon possible, including cutting energy supplies, while Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says cutting off energy exports will spark a national unity crisis. She wants it off the table. Smith went to visit President-elect Trump in Mar-a-Lago to get an exemption for Alberta energy, where she was joined by the self-appointed champion of Trump’s Canadian union strategy, Kevin O’Leary.
Will Poilievre side with Smith on the energy issue, and if so, does that risk being linked to O’Leary, who openly supports an economic union between the US and Canada? Or, will a new Liberal leader side with Ford and drive the old East vs. West internal tensions at a time when unity is needed?
The Canadian federal election cycle and the Liberal leadership race are now being driven by three factors:
Change. The Economy. And Trump.
All of Canada’s leadership candidates are pitching themselves as a change from Trudeau, especially the Liberal contenders, which is a harder case to make than it is for Poilievre.
On Monday, Mark Carneysoft launched his campaign on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” calling himself an “outsider” and talking about his long economic experience in dealing with serious disruptions like the 2008 financial collapse. (Disclosure: Carney is a close family friend, and Diana Fox-Carney is an adviser at Eurasia Group, our parent company). Former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland is also expected to launch her bid, with reports saying she will try to position herself as a change candidate by scrapping the carbon tax, a policy she long championed that has become controversial.
So defining yourself as a change candidate is vital. When it comes to the economy, inflation and home prices are still crucial to the domestic agenda, but will these drop back as the impact of the Trump tariffs is felt? Expect the tariffs to dominate the economic agenda if they come next week.
Does changing the focus of the upcoming federal election to an outside threat change the current polls? That will be the most critical question in the next Canadian federal election. Trump is now the most disruptive and important political figure in Canada, and every day he makes that more clear.
For example, as the California fires raged, the president-elect talked covetously about water from Canada, claiming – erroneously – that water from Canada would have prevented the California fires. “When I was President, I demanded that this guy, the governor (of California), accept the water coming from the north, from way up in Canada,” Trump told Newsmax, likely referring to the Columbia River. “It flows down right through Los Angeles … They would have had so much water they wouldn’t have known what to do with it. You would have never had the fires.”
Like Trump’s claims about the US subsidizing Canada to the tune of $100 billion – most recently debunked by economist Jim Stanford inthis report from the Center for Future Work – this is provocative but false. The Columbia River flows through Washington state and parts of Oregon before emptying into the Pacific Ocean, but it never reaches Los Angeles. And this water issue isn’t some new thing either. In 1961, the US and Canada signed theColumbia River Treaty, a treaty that has been under renegotiation since 2018. Those 15 rounds of negotiations have never included bringing water to LA.
Still, these kinds of jabs, taunts, and threats make Trump the leading opposition figure in Canada, the person changing the direction of politics. Every leader in Canada – whether they like it or not – is now forced to run primarily against Trump, not Trudeau.
51st or Fight: Trudeau leaves, Trump Arrives
Justin Trudeau is leaving you, Donald Trump is coming for you.
The timing couldn’t be worse. The threat couldn’t be bigger. The solutions couldn’t be more elusive.
Canada and the US are headed for a serious and economically dangerous trade war in less than two weeks, and President-elect Donald Trump, seeing Canada in a vulnerable leadership moment, smells blood.
In politics, as in most things, there is no opponent more powerful than time and, after nine years in power, time crushed Justin Trudeau’s political career. The “Sunny Ways” majority government of 2015 for Trudeau gave way to the medieval darkness of his current minority government, beset by dire polls, recurring scandals, and painful internal betrayals. What happened?
In short, there were no new policy ideas to bring back the light. The list of victories that Trudeau mentioned in his resignation speech (some genuinely transformative, others still deeply divisive) — the Canada Child Benefit that lifted over 300,000 children out of poverty (child poverty rates in Canada are now going back up), the first G7 country to put a price on carbon, renegotiating NAFTA, leading the country through the pandemic, legalizing cannabis and medically assisted dying, negotiating a health accord with the provinces, bringing in universal daycare — all these were, in the end, not nearly enough. Politics is all about tomorrow, not yesterday, and the tomorrow promise of Trudeau, once his brand, was gone.
Since the pandemic, Trudeau has been, like incumbents around the world, on his back foot on the trinity of core issues galvanizing populist support: inflation, immigration, and housing prices. His policies to address these were reactive, well behind the instincts of the leader of the official opposition, Pierre Poilievre. It didn’t help that the fiscal guardrails Trudeau had set up were blown. The Liberals were more than CA$20 billion past their target ahead of the fall fiscal update, an update his finance minister was set to give on Dec. 16. Instead, she dropped a radioactive resignation letter that very morning, pointing to Trudeau’s fiscal strategies as “costly political gimmicks” — and laying bare the internal divisions within the Cabinet. He was out of supporters, out of ideas, and looked out of touch.
It finally ended on Monday, an icy Ottawa day with the kind of cold that you can almost grab with a gloved hand and snap over your knee. The prime minister stood alone in front of the cottage where he had done so many press conferences during the pandemic and where I recall sitting to interview a gray-bearded version of him on a similarly frigid winter day back in 2020. Now, he was notably different. Stripped of the pretense and dramatics that sometimes characterized his tenure, he presented a more authentic version of the man most Canadians had long ago lost sight of, telling them that he was resigning as leader and prime minister.
For a boy born on Christmas Day, the pathetic fallacies that marked Justin Trudeau’s life had one last small signal to send. Just before he left the shelter of the cottage to make his resignation announcement, a gust of wind suddenly blew his speech off the podium, papers scattering into the January air. It was over.
For his party, Trudeau’s departure could not come soon enough, and while Liberal Party leaders are still dithering on the rules for a leadership race, the math is cruel. Parliament is prorogued — suspended — until March 24, on Trudeau’s orders. There will be a confidence vote soon after, so expect a Canadian federal election to kick off immediately and run into May. In other words, Trudeau gave the next leader a short runway — more like a cliff. The next PM will barely have time to find the bathrooms and grab a cup of coffee before they will have to hit the hustings and try to climb out of the political hole that finds them 25 points behind the Conservatives.
For Canada, this could not come at a worse time. In less than two weeks, Trump will be sworn in as US president, and he has promised to slap Canada with 25% tariffs and use “economic force” to try to absorb the country as the 51st state.
As I wrote last year, Trump’s threat to absorb Canada as the 51st state has gone from a joke to a trial balloon — and it is quickly becoming a policy goal.
Trump the Isolationist has looped inside out and become Trump the Expansionist, with designs on Greenland, Canada, and Panama. His foreign policy for Central America is basically now the famous palindrome: a man, a plan, a canal, Panama.
Is he serious?
Yes.
Always take the president of the United States seriously, especially when he says he’s being serious. He may be using aggressive rhetoric as a negotiating tool to get better deals, but the threats are very real. Trump believes in tariffs like a priest believes in God.
When Trump threatens to beggar Canada with the economic force of 25% tariffs, it is the ONLY THING THAT MATTERS.
Canadian industry is bracing for a dramatic, painful economic shock. From. Its. Closest. Biggest. Trading. Partner.
All this lines up perfectly with the Top Risks of 2025 that our parent company, Eurasia Group, released this week, as you have read about. Risks such as Trumponomics — high tariffs on all allies and foes — mixed with the risk of The Rule of Don, a mercurial leader who has destroyed norms and wants the rule of the jungle over the rule law, is a lethal combination for a middle power country like Canada.
The rules-based international order is the architecture of the multilateral world, one that the US built in its own image after World War II and, until now, has been the backstop. This order has led to incredible prosperity for both the US and Canada, and billions of others. It is now disappearing faster than the fact-checkers at Meta.
As Trump throws economic bombs, Canada will have to muddle through the next three to five months without a leader who has a national mandate, leaving premiers like Ontario’s Doug Ford to lead the fight. And credit to him: Ford, so far, has done a superb job defending his province and speaking out.
Trump is coming for Canada and wants it to be the 51st state, in part or in whole — and if there was ever a time for someone to prove they have the stuff for leadership in a time of crisis, it is now. To twist an old expression, it is the 51st or fight.
Canadians better be up for a fight.
Trump wants something, but likely not a 51st state
It has been a long time since the United States got any bigger.
In the 19th century, the American governing class believed in Manifest Destiny — that the country should govern the whole continent, spreading democracy and capitalism — and the young republic acquired Alaska and much of Mexico. Recently, though, Americans have seemed happy with their territorial limits.
On Tuesday, Donald Trump signaled that this may be about to change. In a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, the soon-to-be president expressed the desire to acquire Greenland, reacquire the Panama Canal — by force, if necessary — and use “economic force” to acquire Canada.
Observers do not think he can seriously intend to absorb his northern neighbor, but it’s hard to be entirely confident.
Trump has been teasingly calling Justin Trudeau “governor” for weeks and cracking jokes about making Canada the 51st US state, but his tone on Tuesday was different. He sounded serious.
Trump referred to the Canada-US border as an “artificially drawn line” and complained about the cost of the relationship with the United States.
“We don’t need their cars,” he said. “You know, they make 20% of our cars. We don’t need that. I’d rather make them in Detroit. We don’t need their cars. We don’t need their lumber. We have massive fields of lumber. We don’t need their lumber. We don’t need their dairy products. We have more than they have.”
Trump said he would impose “very serious tariffs on Mexico and Canada,” and complained about drugs and migrants crossing both borders.
Since Trump first threatened to hit both countries with tariffs in November, Canadians have shown signs of distress. Premiers, fearing the impact on exports to the United States, have urged Ottawa to cooperate on the border, and Trudeau flew down to Mar-a-Lago to kick-start talks. Canada rushed to present a border plan. But even as they sought to placate Trump, the president-elect increased the intensity of his rhetoric.
Snowball’s chance …
After Tuesday’s news conference, Canadian leaders responded by telling Trump that Canada is not interested in joining the United States — an idea that is just not that popular.
“There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States,” Trudeau tweeted.
“Canada will never be the 51st state,” tweeted Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. “Period.”
“Cut the crap, Donald,” tweeted the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh. “No Canadian wants to join you.
Canadian commentators also expressed that they were shocked and appalled by Trump’s suggestion.
South of the border, though, Trump’s supporters were cheering him on. Matt Walsh, Jack Posobiec, and Jesse Waters all want to conquer Canada.
It is hard to know how seriously to take any of this.
How serious is he?
Trump’s complaints about Canada seem manufactured. Little fentanyl comes across the northern border. The $100 billion trade deficit that Trump gripes about is largely the result of oil and gas exports, which help keep US gas prices low at the pumps. If the Americans don’t want it, Canada could find other markets. Imposing tariffs would wreck the Canadian economy, but it would also damage American interests, especially if Canada imposed retaliatory tariffs on, for example, Florida orange juice.
But some well-connected people are rattled by Trump’s talk. Could he plan to wreak havoc with the Canadian economy? Will he try to divide and conquer by offering oil-rich Alberta the chance to join its biggest market, creating a Donbas on the 49th parallel? Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee joked that the United States might like to take Alberta and leave the rest.
But it doesn’t seem like the MAGA movement would want Canada. Its left-leaning voters would make it hard for any future Republican to win the presidency. English Canadians have been struggling to accommodate prickly French Canadians since the country was founded.
What does MAGA want? So this doesn’t look like a practical proposal, and in the same news conference, Trump sounded unhinged, opining that windmills are driving whales crazy, for example.
The best-informed observers doubt that he is serious about annexing Canada.
“I think he is rattling cages so that he can expand the boundary of acceptable outcomes,” says Eurasia Group Vice Chairman Gerald Butts, who, as a senior adviser to Trudeau, negotiated with Trump. “Something like, sorry we screwed up your auto industry and dairy market, but at least you still have a country.”
“Trump’s threats against Canada seem less than serious as of now, though his comments about Panama and Greenland should not be dismissed,” says Clayton Allen, Eurasia Group’s US director. “Those are a clear effort to expand the range of potential actions and have in-built strategic benefits which Trump or those in his orbit view seriously.”
“He’s negotiating like a real estate developer negotiates,” says Jamie Tronnes, executive director of the Center for North American Prosperity and Security. “He sees a bunch of land and thinks it would be really cool to have his name on it, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“Trump is softening his targets up for negotiations to come,” says Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group. “He’s obviously serious about getting concessions on trade issues and the border, and he’s very happy to continue poking where he finds weakness.”
He has found it in Ottawa. Trudeau, who announced his resignation on Monday, could not be weaker. For the next few months, most of his best people will be occupied by the race to succeed him, and then whomever they choose will likely lose an election to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
Until then, Trudeau is an unpopular lame duck. The last time Trump was president, Trudeau managed to drive a hard bargain as the two countries negotiated the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement.
This time, Trump should have an easier time getting whatever it is he wants, and Canadians had better hope that does not include their sovereignty.