President-elect Donald Trump, ever the diplomat, reportedly joked to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that Canada should become the 51st US state during a dinner last weekend.
Fox News reports that Trump, who met with Trudeau at Mar-a-Lago, made the comment during a discussion of tariffs and trade policy. Trump has threatened to slap Canadian goods with a 25% tariff on his first day in office, which Trudeau reportedly told him would wreck the Canadian economy. In response, Trump suggested that Canada—an independent country of more than 40 million people, and one of America’s most important political and economic partners—become a US state, with Trudeau as its governor. The prime minister laughed “nervously,” Fox reports. On Tuesday, Canadian Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc seemed to confirm that account, telling reporters in Ottawa that Trump was “teasing” the Canadian delegation: “It was, of course, on that issue, in no way a serious comment,” LeBlanc said.
But other aspects of America’s relationship with its northern neighbor could get pretty sobering under Trump. The president-elect has long maintained that both Canada and Mexico have taken advantage of free trade agreements at America’s expense and failed to secure their respective borders. To remedy those grievances, Trump has proposed a sweeping, across-the-board tariff that would dramatically raise the price of Canadian and Mexican goods, from gasoline to avocados. That would likely cause economic chaos on both sides of the US border.
Canada, for its part, has reacted accordingly: Federal officials there are reportedly weighing retaliatory tariffs of their own, and Trudeau met with opposition leaders on Tuesday to discuss Trump’s threats. This week, Ontario—Canada’s largest province and America’s third-largest trading partner after Mexico and China—also launched a multimillion-dollar ad campaign to tout its economic ties to the US. The spots will appear on Fox News and in Washington D.C. airports, as well as during football games. “My message to [Trump] is: Why? Why attack your closest friend, your closest ally?” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said on Tuesday.
Trudeau, at least, seems optimistic that Trump can be talked down from the tariff ledge. Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the US, told the Associated Press that Trudeau successfully convinced Trump not to lump Canada and Mexico together for trade retribution purposes. The PM and president-elect also got “along well” at the dinner, Hillman said, despite the annexation joke. At one point, Trump even told Trudeau that he likes Celine Dion, who is, of course…from Canada.
