Trump met with Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada and had the kind of friendly conversation that should make everyone nervous.
The president-elect told the prime minister if Canada cannot fix the border issues and trade deficit, he will levy a 25% tariff on all Canadian goods on day one when he returns to office.
Trudeau told Trump he cannot levy the tariff because it would kill the Canadian economy completely. Trump replied – asking, so your country can’t survive unless it’s ripping off the U.S. to the tune of $100 billion?
Trump then suggested to Trudeau that Canada become the 51st state, which caused the prime minister and others to laugh nervously, sources told Fox News.
But he continued, telling Trudeau that prime minister is a better title, though he could still be governor of the 51st state.
Sources told Fox News someone at the table chimed in and advised Trump that Canada would be a very liberal state, which received even more laughter. Trump suggested that Canada could possibly become two states: a conservative and a liberal one.
He told Trudeau that if he cannot handle his list of demands without ripping the U.S. off in trade, maybe Canada should really become a state or two and Trudeau could become a governor.
Could he be joking? Maybe he’s joking. Except…this is the kind of thing Trump would dream about. I also suspect there are a lot of Fox News junkies/MAGA hat wearing assholes who have just perked up at the idea of their red wave rolling across the border and teaching those commie liberals up north a lesson.
If it came to that, I’d be on the Canadian side of the fight.
I was wondering whether Trump was mad or stupid and now think that he’s both.
I would rather Minnesota became part of Canada.
I doubt if the Canadian economy will collapse.
It will certainly take a hit though.
Canada exported $27 billion of cars to the USA.
Canada also imported $17 billion of cars and $14 billion in trucks from the USA.
You can see that cars are both imported and exported.
This is because the US and Canadian automobile industries are very closely integrated and cars and car parts readily cross the borders, made by the same US based companies.
The Canadian automobile manufacturing industry will take a big hit.
So will the US automobile industry.
And new cars, already expensive relative to income, will become even more expensive.
Who will pay for this trade war will be the US and Canadian consumers.
Trump did the same thing in his first term.
Threatened to kill NAFTA, the North American Foreign Trade Agreement, with Canada and Mexico and kill their economies.
It was all a bluff and he never carried through on it.
IIRC, both Canada and Mexico pretended to do something and the renegotiated NAFTA agreement looked almost identical to NAFTA.
It’s likely that this time will be the same.
He will threaten and bluff, sign some trivial and meaningless agreements, and nothing will really change all that much.
He does have a congress and GOP party that didn’t sign up for a mutual economic suicide pact between the USA and the rest of the world.
…. Certainly won’t hear ‘im discussing Puerto Rican statehood, alas.
Maybe they could install the Futurama head of Benedict Arnold as governor of Canada. Arnold could do a victory lap in spite, centuries after the fact of course.
Trump’s fashy megalomania is acting up in a bigly way. Not a good sign.
Sounds like America’s Hitler is dreaming of his own Anschluss.
Really hitting the ground running, he is.
As a Canadian, I’m not terribly worried. We can just send in a few junior hockey teams, turn off the lights, and it will all be over in a few minutes.
The mango moron doesn’t realise that having a trade deficit with another country doesn’t mean that they are ripping you off but that they are outcompeting you like good little capitalists. They are producing plenty of stuff that you desire and you aren’t producing enough of what they desire.
Since the US has a trade surplus with the UK, I expect Trump will threaten Starmer with annexation if Starmer refuses to impose tariffs on US goods. Well, no, of course I don’t expect that: Trump’s ignorance and inconsistency go hand in tiny hand.
As a Canadian, I’m disgusted and offended by this rhetoric. I’m going to remember this next time some idiot Yank says that other countries shouldn’t weigh in on American politics.
He means everything he said. I’m in Mexico and he pulls any shit I’ll fight for Mexico.
@raven:
I was mentioning the automobile sector on a previous post… the original Canada-U.S. Auto Pact was signed in 1965, largely to end a trade war that was going on at the time. The automotive companies in general love the integrated system, because it means that instead of having to make all types of cars on both sides of the border to avoid import duties, they can have specialized factories on one or the other side of the border and then ship the vehicles back and forth to even things out.
There have certainly been issues, of course; even under the pre-NAFTA Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement back around 1990 or so the U.S. tried to rules-lawyer around some of the rules regarding foreign components. Basically in order for the car to qualify for avoiding import duties it had to have at least half its parts coming from either Canada or the U.S., but the U.S. tried to argue in some cases that certain cars built in Canada didn’t qualify because if you broke the car up into subsystems, the subsystem should be considered of foreign manufacture if more than half its parts were, and the car should be considered foreign manufacture if more than half its subsystems were. (This would in theory allow a car with as little as a quarter actual foreign parts to be declared of ‘foreign manufacture’ depending on how the subsystems were defined.)
This is part of why so many of us in Canada were engaging in bitter laughter when NAFTA was being negotiated and the usual suspects in the U.S. were complaining about how it would destroy the American economy by allowing cheap foreign stuff to flood the market: because we knew that the U.S. has a very long history of, shall we say, creative interpretation of its own treaties, even with its closest allies.
@Hemidactylus:
It wouldn’t be Arnold’s first time in Canada; he had pushed for and later helped lead an assault on Quebec City back in 1775-1776. A siege which failed, unsurprisingly to anybody who knows Quebec City. (Quebec City is not only arguably the oldest permanent European settlement in North America, having been founded in 1608, it was built on old classic European walled city fortress designs, and both the original French settlers and the later English owners kept upgrading that all the way up to the War of 1812. Add that it’s on a promontory overlooking the river and thus the only ways to get to it are overland through rough terrain or climbing cliff faces, and it’s a really defensible location.)
Trump is looking at the Ukraine conflict and he wishes he could do the same with Canada so that he could impress his hero Putin.
He also doesn’t understand the concept of win-win; for him there is always a loser and he cannot be it. So he’ll try to create a losing proposition in someway for some other party and then he’ll declare himself to be the winner even if it actually becomes a lose-lose thing. That’s what this tariff thing with Canada and Mexico is. He wants to be seen as the winner with Canada and Mexico losing. He doesn’t understand anything about the actual consequences and doesn’t care: he just wants his win.
It is clear he either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care what a trade deficit is. “Fix the trade deficit”? That basically means “Stop selling us stuff we want” or “buy stuff you can’t afford and/or don’t want”
As a U.S. citizen living in Canada since 1997, I can tell you that MANY Canadians will get right in behind Trump and his insane, shifting “ideology.”
Fox News has been available here on the satellite and cable systems since at least 2004, and that, along with plenty of Russian propaganda thru social media aimed at Canada, has done serious damage.
Lots of Canadians hate Justin Trudeau and cannot articulate ANY reason why, even though he’s been a marvelous PM, and during the pandemic made sure all out of work who were affected got $2000/month, for a year, that they didn’t have to pay back. Not macho enough, I suspect. Pierre Poilievre, his conservative opponent, is utterly wrapped up in scandal and Russian cash, yet leads in the (who knows if accurate) polls.
He’s an aging, malignant narcissist with a fairly significant intelligence deficit. Nothing he does anymore surprises me. This is the same idiot who seriously wanted to buy Greenland.
Lauren Walker @16: I was wondering if anyone was going to mention his obsession with Greenland.
The Fox News junkies/MAGA hat wearing assholes have already started. Most of the shootings in Canada are done by American good ole boys who smuggle their penis extensions across the border.
@4 – raven
“IIRC, both Canada and Mexico pretended to do something and the renegotiated NAFTA agreement looked almost identical to NAFTA.”
This is a thing I noticed about Trump. If anyone or anything comes off as good or great he wants his name associated with it, thus the NAFTA redo. Other examples are his trying to replace the ACA (Obamacare) and put his name on a new version even if it was an inferior product. Then there is the Obama Nobel Peace Prize, shit, if Obama got one Trump felt he truly deserved one too. He got some far-right politicians in Norway to nominate him, twice. And of course, there was that tax break Obama gave the American people called the payroll tax cut. Trump was so jealous of the things Obama had done; he decided he need to have a payroll tax cut too.
“President Trump’s executive action to allow the deferring of payroll tax payments will provide little or no near-term economic stimulus. Meanwhile, its potentially chaotic new rules will create significant compliance burdens for businesses, and workers may not see larger paychecks — and those who do could face surprise tax bills in a few months.”
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/trump-payroll-tax-action-wont-work-could-endanger-social-security-and-budget
Trump does and will anything he can to associate his name with greatness.
We do have an actual army, air force, and navy you know. They ain’t big, but they are definitely real. American soldiers would die and there would be American mothers and dads whose children would be gone forever, and for what? How do you think the politics would be if some American kids start coming home in body bags?
Also we have a treaty with you called NORAD so any invasion would be illegal under your law. We are also NATO members and other NATO countries would be legally bound to fight to defend us. I’m not saying that they would, but they’d be legally bound to. Not saying that Trump would care, but still. Maybe WW three will be fought in North America?
We have around 40 million people who kinda think they have the right to run their own country, too. Lotta’ territory for resistance guerillas to hide in, and quite a lot of guns, too. We have a lot of people who know how to live out in the cold.
Ed, pretty sure Article 5 refers to external attacks, not to civil wars.
[Obs, if then USA declared war on a NATO ally, they would perforce become anathema]
I think Trump would be misunderestimating Canadians, who, like Ike, have their box of faith and will meet by that tree in Edmonton. Seeing Ike armored up for battle strikes fear into my heart:
I have ancestry in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia so maybe I get a box of faith too in case Trump invades. Or maybe Canadians would be happy to cede the latter, which is why I never received mine.
@15. Robert Westbrook :
Same here in Oz sadly where we’ve had Murdoch’s malignant media empire rotting brains in the form of newspapers and Sky TV for decades as well. So much needless damage caused and fear, hate and lies spread and amped up.
Afraid that gos for most English speaking countries with possible exception of Aotearoa / New Zealand?.
World leaders have worked Trump out.
Horrible, but manipulable by his ego.
(Not excluding Zelenski)
StevoR, not for decades.
Only since News Corp Australia acquired Sky News Australia in December 2016.
As a Canadian, I would think the best thing we can do is work for the next few years to get better trade partners. Skip over the USA and deal with Europe, South America, and African nations.
Putin must be wanking into his vodka over his investment paying off so well. Or rather his strongarmed oligarchs’ investments.
Wait, what border issues between US and CA? Is Trump bothered by all the tens of Canadians going to the US, or by all the USAians going to Canada?
Rich Woods @28
Is that how they’re making White Russians now?
40 % of US oil consumption comes from Canada and Mexico.
I almost wish Trump goes through with it so his followers experience how disastrous his demented policies are.
It would be very expensive, but in terms of lives destroyed less expensive than implementing the Great Purge of brown people.
As for another matter… every time people back down and make concessions to Trump’s government they are teaching him what he can get away with.
Don’t do that. Follow the Polish example instead. They did not allow their authoritarian government to be “normalised”.
@21: “pretty sure Article 5 refers to external attacks, not to civil wars.”
Since when is invading another sovereign country a “civil war”?
I’m sure that the USA could take over much of Canada quickly. Our main population centers are nice and close to your northern border, ripe for the picking.
I am equally sure that a lot of your young folks would die in the process. And occupying a country and subduing the people in that country are two different things, as you found out in Iraq.
We like you. We con’t want to be you.
“Don’t” want to be you.
We’ve surely learned by now that such “jokes” from today’s fascists are stage 1 in normalising some new outrage. Same with Trump’s “joke” about a third term.
It’s not so much a joke as a threat for what’s coming next.
Lesson I intuited from 2016 and confirmed in the aftermath: When people tell me Trump’s “joking” about doing a thing, it means it’s high on his agenda.
Canadian Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who was with Justin Trudeau for the meeting with Trump, says the statement about joining the US was clearly meant as a joke, not a serious suggestion.
garydargan@18 a large percentage of guns used in crime in Canada are smuggled in from the US. Especially handguns, because legal handguns in Canada are restricted weapons so there are less to steal, and they aren’t as easy to steal. But there is no evidence gun violence in Canada is being conducted by Americans in any numbers. It’s committed by people who are Canadian citizens or who are residents of Canada. The only possible example I can think of is that convicted American anti abortion terrorist James Kopp was charged with shooting Canadian abortion provider Dr. Hugh Short, and suspected in 2 other similar shootings. Because he’s in a US prison the charges have never gone to court.
karellen@29 there’s traffic going both ways across the Canada-US border by undocumented people. For example 8 people, 4 from India and 4 from Romania, died last year when the boat they were being smuggled into the US in sank in the St. Lawrence River. US Border Patrol units reportedly intercepted 21 thousand individuals trying to cross into the US from Canada without permission in the first 10 months of 2024. The opposite also happens, people crossing into Canada without permission in considerable numbers.
LeBlanc is either an idiot, or is telling a diplomatic lie. I hope it’s the latter.
A lot of what Trump “jokes” about turns out to come horribly true some time later.
To state the obvious, the vast majority of US Americans also have zero interest in invading Canada.
It’s a lot easier to buy anything we want from Canada rather than steal it.
It was the same with the Vietnam war and Iraq II war.
A majority of Americans eventually turned against the Vietnam war, recognizing its high cost for something pointless.
Same for the Iraq II war of Bush. Support was never much over 50% and that quickly became a minority position.
PS If the US was ever serious about invading Canada, which we aren’t except for one guy who happens to be…the elected president next year, there is an easy counter.
Build a few nuclear weapons.
No one invades countries with nuclear weapons.
The Israelis figured this one out a few decades ago.
They are based on 1940s technology and you can get most of the engineering knowledge off of Wikipedia. Even South Africa managed to build 4 of them, since dismantled.
@40:”It’s a lot easier to buy anything we want from Canada rather than steal it.”
Trump’s tariff plans could make that a lot more expensive.
The Fates just put this on my Bluesky feed.
The summary:
It should be possible to do in 2 years.
Ukraine gave up thousands of nuclear weapons for a security agreement with, among others, the USA. That security agreement proved to be worthless.
And, now they are facing genocide.
The argument that Ukraine could not use those nukes because they didn’t have the launch codes isn’t the least bit believable.
All they would have to do is take them apart and remanufacture them. Ukraine has huge amounts of nuclear expertise and gets half its electricity from nuclear power plants.
If Ukraine can make nukes in two years, Canada could do the same thing.
KG@38, or LeBlanc, being in the room with Trump, was in a much better place to evaluate the seriousness of his comments than people reading about them second and third hand. Given the giant list of things Trump supposedly wants to do conquering Canada is likely to be somewhere down at 80 or 100 on the list, and I doubt he has any actual interest in doing so in the first place. It’s slightly more likely that the “Trump will start WW3/become the next Pol Pot January 25!” talk I’m seeing in some places, but only very slightly.
timgueguen@43,
Oh, I’m sure it’s not something Trump is actively planning, but his “jokes” are never just jokes – if only because he has no sense of humour. He wants the idea out there, as a “This is what I could do to you” bullying tactic, to be used as a threat if and when that would be to his advantage.
@2
Sadly I won’t be moving to Montana soon. Way to maga.
jenorafeuer
St. Augustine Florida is older having been settled by the Spanish in 1565.
I believe St. John’s Newfoundland was settled in 1496 or so. But it wasn’t part of Canada until 1949.
For what I briefly read, it was believed that John Cabot, the Italian explorer working for King Henry VII of England, landed on St. John’s in 1497 but apparently this is considered legendary. It still is likely the oldest continously inhabited European settlement since it appeared on Portuguese maps as early as 1519.
Trump’s jokes are not jokes.
@26. John Morales :
Yes but before that the Murdoch rags – newspapers – were spreading his brain-rotting propaganda. Including esp The Australian ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Australian ) which I’d say is far right or verging on it more than centre-right. Thanks Overton window pushers..
“Prime Minister (if Canada)” is what it reads on Trump’s foreign leader cheat sheet.