Just hours before agreeing to postpone punishing tariffs for 30 days, Donald Trump reiterated that he would like to see Canada join the U.S. as the 51st state.
The comments came Monday as the two nations stepped to the brink of a major trade war, with the U.S. president having vowed 25-per-cent tariffs on many Canadian goods, and Canada announcing it would respond with its own retaliatory tariffs levelled at $155 billion worth of American goods.
“Look, what I’d like to see — Canada become our 51st state,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Monday.
A video of Trump’s remarks was posted to X by Margo Martin, a White House communications adviser, from her official White House account.
Yet, just hours later, following a phone call with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the tariff threat was delayed by 30 days as Canada implements a series of border control measures, including a joint strike force with the United States against organized crime, and a vow to appoint a “fentanyl czar.”
Trump’s musings about annexing Canada are nothing new, although they have escalated in recent weeks. And the comments came amidst a series of statements from the White House — and Trump himself — that have showcased a varied set of rationale for implementing tariffs against the United States’ closest ally and a major trading partner.
The rationale, at various points, have included: building up domestic American industry, preventing the illegal importation of fentanyl, stopping illegal border crossings, and reducing the United States’ modest trade deficit with Canada. Trump has also complained about the access of U.S. banks to Canadian markets and the amount of money the U.S. spends on continental defence.
In his remarks Monday, Trump said that Canada has nothing that the United States needs, reiterating a claim he has made repeatedly in recent weeks, downplaying the lumber, energy and auto manufacturing relationships that are heavily integrated across the North American economy. The vast majority of U.S. energy imports come from Canada, including about 60 per cent of crude oil and 99 per cent of natural gas imports.
“We don’t need them for the cars, we don’t need them for lumber. We don’t need them for anything. We don’t need them for energy, we have more energy than they do,” said Trump. “So I’d love to see that. Some people say that would be a longshot. If people wanted to play the game right, it would be 100-per-cent certain that they’d become a state. But a lot of people don’t like to play the game. Because they don’t have a threshold of pain.”
All major Canadian political leaders have stated flat-out that Canada will never join the United States.
“Canada will never be the 51st state. We are an independent, proud and strong nation,” Poilievre said Sunday. Trudeau has said there’s not “a snowball’s chance in hell” that Canada will join the United States and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said that Canadians will “fight like hell” to defend Canada.
On Monday, shortly after the Trump comments began circulating on social media, Singh claimed that Trump’s ultimate end goal is Canada — not any of the stated aims around drugs or migrants.
“This isn’t about the border. It’s not about a trade deficit. It’s about making Canada the 51st state. This is a threat to our sovereignty,” wrote Singh on X.
Polling shows that 80 per cent of Canadians would vote against joining the United States — although about one-third would consider joining up if Canadians got U.S. citizenship and their assets were converted to American dollars.
Trump has been escalating his rhetoric around Canada for weeks. It began with a joke at a dinner at Mar-a-Lago, then social media posts calling Trudeau the “governor of the 51st state,” before escalating in early January when he said the United States would use “economic force” to annex its northern neighbour.
“You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like, and it would also be much better for national security,” Trump said, speaking at his Florida resort.
In an executive order published over the weekend, Trump argued that drugs and illegal migrants crossing the 49th parallel were the key factors behind the decision to implement tariffs. This was the same rationale offered last week by Howard Lutnick, the billionaire CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a U.S. financial services firm, and Trump’s pick for commerce secretary.
“As far as I know they (Canada and Mexico) are acting swiftly and if they execute it there will be no tariff, and if they don’t then there will be,” Lutnick said last week.
However, the day before the executive order was released, Trump seemed to contradict this. When reporters asked him if there was anything Canada, Mexico and China could do to avoid tariffs, he responded “No, nothing. Not right now. No.”
On Monday, though, it appeared that a number of Canadian moves on the border, including a $1.3-billion security plan first announced in mid-December, were enough to at least stall tariff implementation.
“Proposed tariffs will be paused for at least 30 days while we work together,” wrote Trudeau on X.
Trump has also argued, repeatedly, that the United States has a massive trade deficit with Canada; he often says the United States subsidizes Canada between $100 billion and $200 billion.The trade deficit, in fact, is more like $32 billion, while America’s global trade deficit around $1 trillion.
In addition, he complains that the integrated security relationship between Canada and the United States amounts to a subsidy and he has regularly browbeaten Canada for not hitting its NATO spending target of two per cent of GDP; we spend just shy of 1.5 per cent of GDP. Trump also mused recently about raising the NATO spending target to five per cent of GDP, a rate that even the United States hasn’t hit since 1992.
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