United States President-elect Donald Trump threatened to use “economic force” to annex Canada on Tuesday. Canadian politicians were quickly outraged, while experts doubt the seriousness of this proposal.
Mr. Trump made several incendiary remarks during a disjointed press conference on Tuesday in his stronghold of Mar-a-Lago, Florida. He announced his intentions to annex the Panama Canal and Greenland, using force if necessary. On whether he could do the same for Canada, he ruled out using military force to make his northern neighbor the 51e State, but threatened to achieve this using “economic force”.
“If you get rid of that artificially drawn line and look at what that would look like, that would be much better for national security as well,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the border between Canada and the United States. “Essentially, we are protecting Canada,” he argued.
The president-elect has also repeatedly asserted that Canada is subsidized by the United States, citing as proof the trade deficit between the two countries. Remember that Mr. Trump had already announced that he intended to impose 25% customs duties on Canada if he failed to stem “the flow of illegal drugs across the border.”
The president-elect and his team have not yet offered details on the nature of the measures that the Trump administration could take to realize its plans for territorial expansion, reported the Wall Street Journal mardi.
In the evening, the American president reiterated his provocations on his social network Truth Social, by publishing a map of the United States including Canada.
Strong reactions in Ottawa
The Canadian political class was quick to rebel. “Never, ever, will Canada be part of the United States,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau immediately wrote on ‘other’s largest trading and security partner. » This is the first time that the Prime Minister has directly commented on the American president-elect’s remarks on the 51e State, which have grown and multiplied since he first joked about it in November.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, added by affirming on the social network that “the comments of President-elect Trump demonstrate a total incomprehension of what makes Canada a strong country”. “We will never back down from threats. »
The Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, also indicated on X that “Canada will never be the 51e State. Period. » He blames a “weak and pathetic” Liberal government which failed to make the United States understand the importance of Canada, particularly because of its energy exports and its imports of American products.
The response from Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the New Democratic Party, was unequivocal: “Cut the bullshit, Trump. No one wants to join you. » “Your attacks will harm jobs on both sides of the border. If you attack Canadian jobs, Americans will pay the price,” he wrote on X.
How to react in the circumstances?
The course of action for Canadian politicians in such circumstances is not unanimous among the experts consulted by The Duty.
“The first thing that must be done, and which was not done at the beginning, is to say that Canada is a sovereign country with its own culture, pride, customs, values, and that it is an inappropriate joke on the part of the president,” according to Jonathan Paquin, professor of political science at Laval University. The Canadian political context, where the Prime Minister is part of a minority government and recently announced his resignation, “is really not an ideal situation” to respond effectively to these threats, according to him.
Julien Tourreille, researcher in residence at the Raoul-Dandurand Chair at the University of Quebec in Montreal, sees things differently. “When he started his joke about the 51e State, the best would have been for no one to react in Canada, since, obviously, the more we react, the more it encourages him to repeat this joke. » And by repeating it, “we have the impression that he is beginning to convince himself that it is a possibility”.
“Canadian politicians tend to overreact to these kinds of situations,” particularly because they are pushed to do so by the media, believes Pierre Martin, professor of political science at the University of Montreal. Mr. Trump seeks to provoke his opponents, much more than to develop a realistic proposal, according to him.
“No one really believes it”
What is Donald Trump trying to do with his annexation threats? There are essentially two possibilities, explains Jonathan Paquin. “The first is that he uses this argument to provoke Canada, to intimidate it, to undermine the morale of its leaders in order to obtain a maximum of concessions from it” in the issues of border security, including immigration and drug trafficking. “The second possibility, which is much more troubling, would be that Donald Trump now chooses to adopt an imperial approach to annexing territories,” continues Mr. Paquin.
“We cannot take his words literally, but we cannot not consider him at all either,” warns Julien Tourreille. There are three methods for expanding American territory, he explains: military conquest, purchase, and the legal procedure, which would require the will of Canada. The latter procedure would be unlikely, given that only 13% of Canadians would like their country to become a state of the United States, according to a Léger poll from December 2024.
“No one really believes” that Donald Trump wants to make Canada an American state, according to Pierre Martin. This type of diatribe, however, helps to reinforce his image as a good negotiator among his base and to establish a position of strength to negotiate with other countries, according to him. “Probably the most rational response” to his threats would be to say that the issue will be discussed when he is president.
Moreover, the integration of the Canadian and American economies has benefited producers for decades, but it is not clearly established that Canadians have benefited more than Americans, believes Professor Martin. The trade deficit is “not necessarily a sign of exploitation of one partner by the other”, despite Donald Trump’s interpretation of it.
With The Canadian Press and Agence France-Presse
