Trump talks of using ‘economic force’ to annex Canada with U.S
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump said he would be willing to use “economic force” to coax Canada into a political union with the United States, a remark that was roundly rejected by federal political leaders on Tuesday.
The president-elect’s comments were an escalation of his frequent musings about annexing this country, which Canadian officials had previously written off as a joke. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh all responded with statements that ruled out the possibility of Canada becoming a U.S. state.
Mr. Trump also signalled he still intends to proceed with threatened steep tariffs on Canadian and Mexican exports.
He made the comments during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Tuesday, after he was asked whether he would consider using military force to acquire Canada. “No,” he said. “Economic force.
“Canada and the United States: That would be really something,” Mr. Trump continued. “You get rid of that artificially drawn line and you take a look at what that looks like.”
In the wide-ranging conversation with media, Mr. Trump also repeatedly refused to rule out acquiring Greenland and the Panama Canal by military force.
Mr. Trudeau rejected Mr. Trump’s proposal for this country. “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States,” Mr. Trudeau said in a post on X. “Workers and communities in both our countries benefit from being each other’s biggest trading and security partner.”
Mr. Trudeau is convening an in-person meeting with Canada’s premiers next Wednesday to discuss the path forward with Mr. Trump, a government source said. The Globe is not identifying the source because they are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Mr. Trump also tried to make the case that Canada has little leverage over the United States. He listed off all the Canadian imports that he felt Americans could do without, from automobiles to lumber to dairy products.
He said the United States doesn’t need help defending North America.
“It would also be much better for national security. You know, again, we basically protect Canada,” he said. He added Canada wants to join a U.S. procurement plan for icebreakers, but he doesn’t see the point.
“We’re buying icebreakers, and Canada wants to join us in the buying of icebreakers. I said, you know, we don’t really want to have a partner in the buying of icebreakers. We don’t need a partner.”
In November, Mr. Trump threatened 25-per-cent tariffs on Canada and Mexico unless they took action to stop illegal migration and drug smuggling into American territory. Canada subsequently announced $1.3-billion in new border spending over six years. But on Tuesday, the president-elect suggested this has not satisfied him. He said drugs are flowing across American borders “in record numbers,” and “we are going to make up for that by putting tariffs on Mexico and Canada. Substantial tariffs.”
Mr. Trump did not campaign on annexing Canada, but since winning the November, 2024, presidential election, he has persistently advanced the idea of making Canada the 51st state.
Mr. Trudeau’s government has dismissed his musings as a joke, however the Prime Minister’s decision this week to step down after his party chooses a new leader leaves open the question of who will represent Canada in any dispute with the United States.
Part of Mr. Trump’s rationale is that, in his mind, a trade imbalance between Canada and the United States amounts to a subsidy of the Canadian economy. The U.S. trade deficit with Canada on an annual basis reached $100-billion as of early December – something Ottawa says is largely caused by Canada’s significant oil and natural gas sales to the Americans.
Polls suggests few Canadians support Mr. Trump’s proposal.
A December Leger survey suggests only 13 per cent of Canadians would like the country to become the next U.S. state. Eighty-two per cent are opposed to the idea. (Leger polled 1,520 people between Dec. 6 and Dec. 9. The survey does not have a margin of error because online polls aren’t considered truly random samples.)
Roland Paris, a former foreign policy adviser to Mr. Trudeau and director of the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, said on X that Mr. Trump’s musings “now sound less like jokes.” He warned Canada must be ready to defend not only its economy but also its sovereignty.
In an interview, Mr. Paris said Mr. Trump’s comments about Canada, Greenland and Panama taken together suggest he thinks as American leader he should have a free hand to do as he pleases in the Western hemisphere. This, he added, sounds a lot of like the “great power spheres of influence” rationale used by Russian President Vladmir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“The view that’s coming through in all of these comments about Canada, Panama, Mexico and Greenland is one that’s quite consistent with the Putin and Xi idea that great powers should have unrestricted spheres of influence to dominate their neighbours.”
He said it doesn’t matter how serious Mr. Trump is about annexation. “It increasingly looks like Trump has Canada in his crosshairs, whether we take him literally or not. He is paying a lot of attention to complaining about Canada, and that is very bad news for us.”
Mr. Poilievre and Mr. Singh also rebutted Mr. Trump.
“Canada will never be the 51st state. Period,” Mr. Poilievre said in a statement. “We are a great and independent country.”
He said Canada is the United States’ best friend. “We spent billions of dollars and hundreds of lives helping Americans retaliate against Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks. We supply the U.S. with billions of dollars of high-quality and totally reliable energy well below market prices. We buy hundreds of billions of dollars of American goods.”
He added that if elected prime minister he would “rebuild our military and take back control of the border to secure both Canada and the U.S.” and “take back control of our Arctic to keep Russia and China out.”
Mr. Singh said on X, in a statement addressed to Mr. Trump, that “no Canadian wants to join you.”
“Your attacks will hurt jobs on both sides of the border,” he added. “You come for Canadians’ jobs, Americans will pay a price.”
But Mr. Trump said Canada brings little to the table.
“We don’t need their cars. You know, they make 20 per cent of our cars. We don’t need that. I’d rather make them in Detroit. We don’t need their cars,” he said. “We don’t need their lumber. We have massive fields of lumber. We don’t need their lumber,” he said, adding later: “We don’t need their dairy products. We have more than they have.”
He suggested he has lost patience supporting Canada. “We’ve been good neighbours, but we can’t do it forever, and it’s a tremendous amount of money.”
In recent weeks, he has proposed buying Greenland, saying American ownership and control “is an absolute necessity,” and threatened to take back the canal unless Panama reduces transit fees for U.S. vessels.
He explicitly refused, upon repeated questioning, to rule out the use of force when it comes to Greenland or Panama – behaviour that is normally limited to authoritarian leaders.
“It might be you have to do something,” he said.
Mr. Trump also said he wanted to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” a name he said has a “beautiful ring to it.”
This article was first reported by The Globe and Mail
