Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday there was “not much chance of Canada becoming part of the United States” after US President-elect Donald Trump threatened to force integration through “economic force.”
“We don’t need anything” that Canada trades with the United States, Trump said in a wide-ranging news conference from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida less than two weeks before he took office, again repeating comments about having Canada trade with the United States. Canada is a US state.
The statement by Trudeau, who announced Monday that he would resign as prime minister after selecting a new Liberal leader, represented his strongest reaction yet against Trump, who has repeatedly described Trudeau as a “governor.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s comments on Tuesday were the latest in his recent threats against longtime U.S. allies, renewing questions and concerns about plans to use trade as a cudgel, and going beyond similar comments he made about making Canada part of the United States.
Trump told reporters that he did not rule out using military action to regain control of the Panama Canal and acquire Danish-controlled Greenland, which he said the United States needed for economic and security reasons.
When asked if he was considering the same thing to “annex and take over Canada,” Trump replied: “No — economic power.”
“Canada and the United States would be really great,” he said. “You have to get rid of that artificially drawn line and take a look at what that would look like, and that would also be much better for national security.”
“There is not much chance of Canada becoming part of the United States.” Trudeau later wrote on X.
He added: “Workers and communities in our countries benefit from being each other’s largest trade and security partner.”
Trump has repeatedly stated that the United States “subsidizes” Canada to the tune of $200 billion in trade and spends billions of dollars more on continental defense programs like NORAD than Canada, which he said “basically has no military.”
“We don’t need their cars, we don’t need their wood,” he continued. “We don’t need anything they have. We don’t need their dairy products.
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“We don’t need anything. Why should we lose $200 billion a year and more to protect Canada?”
Canada and the United States are each other’s most important trading partners, with more than $3.6 billion worth of goods and services crossing the border daily. The US trade deficit with Canada – which is different from subsidies – reached US$53.5 billion in 2022, the US Trade Representative’s Office says.
Trump first raised the idea of Canada becoming the 51st U.S. state when he hosted Trudeau and other Canadian officials at Mar-a-Lago in November, shortly after Trump threatened to impose 25% tariffs on all products coming from Canada and Mexico.
Although Canadians said at the time that Trump was joking, the US president-elect repeated the comment several times on social media and called Trudeau a “governor.”
Trump said Tuesday that because of all the money the United States spends on Canada, “it should become a country.”
“We do it out of habit, we do it because we love our neighbors and we are good neighbors, but we can’t do it forever,” he said.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said last December that Canada would “never” become the 51st US state.
“We are a proud people with a heroic past and a brilliant future,” he told reporters at the time.
Trump on Tuesday said “I don’t care” about comments from Poilievre, whose Conservative Party has a government majority, according to an Ipsos poll conducted for Global News last month.
Trump has indicated that he intends to follow through on his threat to impose tariffs on Canada, despite initially linking it to demands for enhanced border security, which Ottawa has sought to address.
He said the tariffs would “offset” the “record numbers” of immigrants and drugs flowing into the United States from Canada and Mexico.
“We want to get along with everyone, but as you know, it takes two people to tango,” he said.
Trump’s comments about Canada came hours after US President Joe Biden praised Trudeau for strengthening US-Canadian relations as prime minister.
Trump says NATO members should spend 5%
Trump also said he wants to see NATO members spend at least five percent of their gross domestic product on defense. The military alliance has set a spending target of 2 per cent, which Canada is currently not meeting.
“If you have a country and a regular army, you get 4%,” Trump said. The United States currently spends 3.38 percent on defense.
“They can all afford it, but it should be five per cent, not two per cent.”
Canada, which currently spends 1.37 per cent of GDP on defence, currently expects it to reach 1.76 per cent by 2030. The government says it is on a “clear path” to achieving 2 per cent by 2032, although the budget official The parliamentarian raised doubts about the spending plan.
NATO allies, including the United States under the Biden administration and during Trump’s first term, have criticized Canada for years for not meeting the 2 per cent target.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer proposed raising NATO’s spending target to 3% in light of the growing threat posed by Russia and other foreign adversaries.
Trump on Tuesday repeated his well-trodden story of refusing to agree to aid for NATO members who don’t meet their spending target if they were attacked, but he said that threat is what has led more members to increase their defense spending.
“I took a lot of heat from the media (for making that threat),” Trump said. “And you know what happened? Money started flowing in. That’s why NATO has money.”
Biden is credited with having 23 members meet the goal now, up from just six in 2021, by leading efforts to rally Western allies around support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion in 2022.
