Donald Trump’s increasingly harsh approach to relations with Canada is raising fears of possible consequences north of the border and questions about how serious the new US president really is.
Having already threatened to cripple Canada’s economy with tariffs the day he returns to the White House, Trump stepped things up on Tuesday, telling a news conference that he wants to use “economic force” to “get rid of” the border between the two countries.
Trying to translate what Trump says into what he really means can be a difficult task.
But with four years of evidence from his first term turning some of his words into action, along with some hard economic facts about Canada-US trade, it’s possible to draw a few reasoned conclusions.
“It’s very hard to know when he’s serious about anything, but he sticks by many of his most outrageous statements,” said Matthew Lebo, a political science professor at Western University in London, in an interview with CBC News. .
It also helps to keep in mind the advice of a writer who covered Trump extensively in 2016: take what he says seriously, but not always literally.
President-elect Donald Trump reiterated his problems with Canada on Tuesday, citing concerns about the Canadian military and claiming that the US subsidizes the Canadian economy. He ruled out using military force against Canada, saying he would rely on ‘economic force’ when he returns to the Oval Office.
Here’s a guide to trying to understand what Trump means when he talks about Canada.
‘Very serious tariffs’
After initially framing his threat of 25 percent tariffs on imported goods as something neighboring countries could avoid if they improved border security, Trump is no longer talking tentatively.
“We’re going to put very serious tariffs on Mexico and Canada,” Trump said during a press conference on Tuesday. The $1.2 billion border security plan that the Trudeau government put together and presented to Trump’s transition team last month does not appear to have satisfied the president-elect.
Canadian officials are increasingly worried that Trump is already worried he decided impose tariffs on at least some of Canada’s exports to the U.S., so officials have compiled a list of hundreds of U.S.-made goods that Canada is considering hitting back with retaliatory tariffssenior Canadian government source Katie Simpson told the CBC.
There is some skepticism that Trump would impose tariffs on Canada’s biggest export — crude oil — because that would likely raise the price of gas at the pump in the U.S., but there are plenty of signs that he sees no downside to taking such a swipe at another. Canadian goods levy.
His association of tariffs with border security provides the ostensible legal justification he needs for imposing them. Only Congress has the power to impose tariffs, with a few exceptions — including if the president declares national economic crisissomething he threatened to do regarding Mexico 2019.
Trump and his to be elected secretary of commerceHoward Lutnick, consider the tariffs potentially significant source of income for the US Treasury Department — something that could help finance income tax cuts, despite evidence that the move could economically hurt more Americans than would help.
‘Economic power’
During the press conference, Trump clearly refused to rule out using the military to take control of the Panama Canal and Greenland. The reporter then asked Trump if he was “considering military force to annex and take over Canada.”
“No,” Trump replied. “Economic power”.
Tariffs of 25 percent would certainly qualify as a major economic force.
The harsh reality is that Canada-US trade is proportionately much more important to the Canadian economy than to the US economy. USA to calculate 77 percent of the value of Canadian exports and 63 percent of imports in 2023. In contrast, Canada to calculate 17 percent of the value of US exports and only 13.5 percent of its imports in the same year.
Some Trump watchers see the threat of tariffs as method of acquiring leverage in the upcoming renegotiation of the tripartite trade agreement it signed with Canada and Mexico in 2018.
There is a range of thought that Trump sees Canada as politically weak, given Justin Trudeau leaving soon as prime minister and the struggles of the Liberal Party in the elections.
US President-elect Donald Trump is threatening to use ‘economic force’ to annex Canada, but is he serious or is this just another negotiating tactic? The National’s Adrienne Arsenault asks two former ambassadors.
‘Hundreds of billions a year to care for Canada’
Canadian officials told CBC News that Trump frustrated by the US trade deficit with Canada.
He has consistently – and inaccurately – portrayed the trade imbalance as the US subsidizing Canada. He also exaggerated the size of the trade deficit, which was 68 billion dollars in 2023
“We spend hundreds of billions a year to take care of Canada,” Trump said at his press conference. “Why would we have a $200 billion deficit? Add to that the many, many other things we give away [Canada] in terms of subsidy.”
Trump cited one example of those “many other things”: defense.
“They rely on our military,” he said. “That’s all well and good, but you know, they have to pay for it. It’s very unfair.”
For that matter, Trump is clearly right. It’s Canada is currently spending about 1.3 percent of GDP on defense, well below the NATO guideline of two percent. Canada would have to spend roughly $21 billion more on the military this year to reach that goal. Trump has long railed about NATO countries not pulling their weight in the military alliance.
‘We don’t need anything they have’
In rapid succession during his press conference, Trump said the US should not import cars, lumber or dairy products from Canada.
Although it is debatable whether this is true, the very fact that he is saying this sends chills down the spine of Canadian companies in these sectors.
This is being read as a sign that Trump is willing to flex American economic muscle to protect American industries.
Laura Dawson, executive director of the Future Borders Coalition, a binational business group, says Canada needs to show Trump and his officials concrete ways that free trade with Canada is good for the U.S.
“Canada needs a strategy that doesn’t just ask for what we need,” Dawson said in an interview with CBC News Network’s Aarti Pole.
“We need proactive proposals that say, ‘Here’s what we’re doing on security, here’s what we’re doing on energy, here’s what we’re doing on critical minerals and advanced manufacturing. We’d really like you to embrace this and this will be great for North America,'” Dawson said
Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, Immigration Minister Marc Miller and International Trade Minister Mary Ng respond to US President-elect Donald Trump’s comments that he will use ‘economic force’ to absorb Canada into the United States.
‘Get rid of that artificially drawn line’
The idea that Canada will become the 51st country is one of Trump’s threats that Canadians may not want to take literally, although there are reasons to take it seriously.
In the past few weeks on social media, Trump has frequently mocked Trudeau as the “governor” of the “state of Canada” and referred to Canada as the 51st state.
Trump also talked about Canada becoming a country during his late November speech dinner with Trudeau. After prior dismissal Trump’s comments as a light joke, Treasury Secretary Dominic LeBlanc changed the tune on Wednesday, saying “the joke’s over.”
Trump’s heightened words at his press conference had many other Canadians wondering if they could really just laugh it off.
“Canada and the United States, that would really be something,” Trump said. Get rid of that artificially drawn line and see what that looks like, and it would also be much better for national security.
From silly AI-generated social media posts to threats of ‘economic force’, Donald Trump has been attacking Canadian sovereignty for weeks. CBC’s Ellen Mauro breaks down the president-elect’s anti-Canada rhetoric.
Canada becoming the 51st state just isn’t going to happen, says Jim Hines, a nine-term Democrat from Connecticut.
He told MSNBC that Trump’s musings on the subject were “little pieces of tinfoil and fireworks designed to distract us from the fact that the president-elect is going to completely fail to deliver on the economic promises he made to the people.”
You also have to wonder why Trump or congressional Republicans would want to recognize on equal footing – as required by the US Constitution — a new state with the population of California and the potential to change the results of future presidential and congressional elections.
With no Canadian political party advocating becoming the 51st federal state and no evidence of a large number of ordinary Canadians pushing to join the US, it’s awfully hard to imagine a scenario where Canada willingly gives up its sovereign status nations.
That is, unless it’s a doomsday scenario: namely, that Trump uses so much “economic force” over an extended period of time that it causes the Canadian economy to collapse, causing widespread job losses and social unrest north of the border, as if Canadians were to begin see joining the US as the only alternative.
