Trump is talking to an international organization for the first time about Canada becoming a country

Donald Trump used an international venue for the first time on Thursday for his striking proposal that the US get another country: Canada.

In his first global event since becoming US president earlier this week, Trump spoke via video link at an economic forum in Davos, Switzerland.

His speech and the question-and-answer session that followed offered an early example of squeezing various allies predicted for his own presidency.

What was less predictable until recently was the intensity of that squeeze, the frequency of its focus on Canada and its rhetorical attacks on its sovereignty.

Trump arrived with a broad message to the international business community: Build in the US or face harsh tariffs.

“Come make your product in America, and we’ll give you one of the lowest taxes of any nation in the world,” Trump said somewhat exaggerating US corporate tax advantage.

“But if you don’t manufacture your product in America, which is your prerogative, then you will, quite simply, have to pay a tariff.”

And while attacking several American allies, including the European Union, he continued to disparage Canada for quite some time.

Trump has threatened to impose stiff tariffs on the US’s North American neighbors as early as next week, although he also signed on executive order this suggests a longer time horizon, requiring a study on the borders of North America by April 1st.

That same order suggests Trump wants to apply pressure on additional fronts. It refers to a scheduled review of the North American trade agreement, and also orders its officials to report on trade deficits and foreign taxes which hit American companies.

In his speech in Davos, he again complained about the US trade deficit with Canada – which is real, but a fraction from the 200 to 250 billion US dollars that Trump claimed in his speech, and tends to rise and fall with the price of oil that Americans import.

“We’re not going to have that anymore. We can’t do that,” Trump said, during an extended riff on Canada.

“As you probably know, I say, ‘You can always become a country, and if you are a country, we won’t have a deficit. We won’t have to tariff you’.”

He complained that Canada was difficult to deal with and repeated his past complaints that they did not need its products: “We don’t need them to make our cars, and they make a lot of them. We don’t need their lumber because we have our forests, we don’t need theirs oil and gas.”

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The facts are not so simple. Regarding oil, for example, it is true that the US is getting closer more confident than it has been in decades, but it is still a net importerby a huge majority from Canadaand its refineries are designed to handle heavy Canadian crude.

What is unquestionably real is the economic pressure it exerts on several fronts.

It’s not just the threat of 25 percent tariffs, though that’s bad enough. Companies are preparing for damage, and some, like Honda, are expressed nervousness about its manufacturing plans in Canada.

And it’s not just Trump’s other trade threats. It is also massive deregulation an effort he has launched in key minerals, oil and gas, which risks pulling investment into the US from other countries.

There is also military pressure. Trump has previously threatened to leave NATO countries unprotected if they do not increase defense spending; and upped the ante in Davos.

On Thursday, Trump said he would require NATO countries to increase military spending to a whopping five percent of GDP. No NATO country has reached that level and the majority they are not even close. They are rare even halfway. The USA is at 3.4 percent.

In Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau noted that Canada has nearly tripled its defense budget, and recently promised in order to reach NATO’s current target of two percent. It it won’t happen however, according to the parliamentary observer, for years.

Canada will have ample opportunity to discuss these issues with Trump in various international forums this year.

There is G7 in Alberta in June, then NATO summit in Europe later that month, although both events could take place after the federal election.

Meanwhile, Trump is upending generations-old norms in Canada-US relations, publicly questioning Canada’s sovereignty in a way no American politician has done in more than a century.

But all this talk of statehood will remain entirely hypothetical if American public opinion has anything to do with it. Several surveys — by the Wall Street Journal, Reuters-Ipsos and the Economist-YouGov — conducted in recent days suggest the idea of ​​annexing Canada is massively unpopular.