U.S. President Donald Trump doubled down on his desire for Canada to become the 51st state Sunday, while also threatening new tariffs on steel and aluminum products.
Summary
Donald Trump reiterated his claim that Canada would be better as the U.S.’s 51st state, citing trade imbalances and lower taxes.
He also announced new 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, including from Canada, despite a recent 30-day reprieve.
Canadian PM Justin Trudeau has not formally responded, but a government source said they await official confirmation.
Trump criticized Canada’s defense spending and border security, despite recent Canadian commitments.
Canada previously retaliated against similar tariffs in 2018 before a 2019 trade deal resolved the dispute.
Elon Musk and the nazi sad boys will just dig up cases, where chain smokers having lung cancer getting treatment, etc. In Hungary, some try to divert the nager created by the constant defunding of healthcare (some of which was done by diverting money into building football stadiums "to encourage children to do sports thus be healthy") to the sick and the disabled...
Fall for it? They're grateful he's made their job insanely easy. They used yo have to investigate things and then risk running afoul of the powerful. Now they just have to print whatever the latest outrageous bullshit comes out of Donald's mouth and reap the clicks and ad dollars.
Reduced quality of life? Greater danger of being shot in a school? Shorter life expectancy? Lower quality food? And imperial president instead of a democratic one?
Giving them more than two senators might lead to a senate that isn't perpetually gridlocked. That makes them dangerously close to being able to pass progressive legislation instead of nothing but mandatory funding bills with 37 pages worth of riders and pork.
Everyone assumes Canada is super liberal country just because of universal healthcare. They forget that Alberta is basically snowy Texas, and the other prairie provinces have more in common with the Midwest than New York.
He also hasn't considered the destruction that 30 million occupied dissidents (from a country known for their prolific war crimes) can unleash on their oppressor.
This plan leaves out the fact that the majority of Canadians don't want to join. They may have their challenges right now, but there are some things they aren't willing to give up, like nationalized health care and national identity. I suspect many Canadians will fight to the death over this, the same way Americans would fight if forced to join Canada. They are our neighbors and that's about as close as people want to get.
Yup, already had the "flee or stand and die" convo with my partner a few weeks ago. I am firmly willing to risk death to defend the progress we've made as a Province and Nation. We aren't perfect and are early in the process but we're trying to recon with our history of colonial genocide and embrace a truer multiculturalism which the US refuses to even acknowledge. We have made commitments to the health and well-being of all citizens, not just the productive bodies which fuel the markets. It's incomplete but aspirational and walking it back would be a disgrace.
The American democracy is an outdated shambles that has fallen into ruin and I will not be bound by it by choice. There is no freedom or opportunity the USA can offer us. Only more oppression on rights we already have enshrined.
He's currently trying to get a 51st state (Canada would need to be at least 6 or more, in all honesty), but it looks like he's at risk of losing some states from where I'm sitting.
If he tried to invade Canada, I think he’d quickly be fighting a war on two fronts, because sane Americans like myself and others that are organizing aren’t going to just let that happen. Hopefully, if half our military hasn’t lost their minds too, they’ll join us.
More flooding the zone. He won't do this. He is just stiring up more media to distract from him pickpocketing the whole country. His real deviousness is the sovereign fund play. He wants to take taxpayer dollars, which he is actively trying to raise for everyone making less than $500k a year, and put it into an investment fund that buys American stocks. Effectively, he wants to take money from 99% of Americans and just give it to the largest corporations. Everything else he is talking about is just distraction from that fact.
Most of us would rather die than ever become an American. Want a good example of the mood in Canada summed up against our 'ally to the south' as of late? Well let me just personally put it this way. You, the United States, are a fucking joke.
To quote an author, Stephen Marche, who spoke on the CBC here in Canada recently... The bold is mine but the emphasis really should be placed there anyway.
They've [The US] come off of 70 years of failed wars of occuption. One thing you have to understand about these comments is that they come from a profound weakness that America is really unfamiliar with. And Canada is unfamiliar with America being this weak. They can't hold Baghdad, I'm not sure why they think they can hold Montreal. But they're also being kicked out of Niger and you know they are weaker than they've ever been in a lot of ways. They are extremely fragile as a country. They have absolutely no solidarity, they have absolutely no unity. They are in the middle of dismantling their administrative state and war is a is a test, fundamentally, of the strength of the administrative state. So I think you should take this about as seriously as you would take the ramblings of a crack addict on the subway. I.e, you pay attention to it and get out of the way and you do what you can but, you know, this is not something to be treated like an actual... this is not something to be thought about. It's just the ramblings of lunacy.
[...]
I think he's [Trump] actually managed to make Canadians patriotic for the first time since I can remember. You have to say, he's the president of the United States but the United States is crumbling. Institutions are falling apart and 'Who the United States is at this moment'... that's not a meaningful phrase. You have to ask yourself which America are you talking about, which institutions are you talking about, because they are not under the guidance of anyone, right?
[...]
All he [Trump] can do is destroy. The American stock market is falling, even the threat of this [tarrifs on Canadian goods] has caused inflation to raise it's head. The American people fired everyone who has caused gas prices to rise almost immediately. They can tolerate almost anything from their political class. War crimes, whatever, but increase gas prices they go crazy for. So it's just very important to understand that this is spoken from a position of profound weakness.
[...]
America has never been an uglier place to become a part of. <laughs> I mean who would wanna be American at this point in history. They're about to start killing each other. There is no question that there is a Canadian rejection of American values, the American government and Amreica itself. Why wouldn't you reject these people? They're awful.
I disagree with only one point there: while America as a political entity is like a crazy crackhead, it's like a very heavily armed crazy crackhead. Treat the prospect of being invaded by the US the same way Ukrainians treated the prospect of being invaded by Russia. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst, because the US military is really good at wrecking whole countries even if it sucks at occupying them.
And are they just going to start shooting normal people at random? Canadians look exactly and sound exactly like America. The US Military is really good at wrecking a country but who cares when we can cross a border you can't defend, mingle perfectly and start guerilla attacks against major infrastructure?
This war is not just tanks vs planes and ships vs submarines. This would end violently for America.
And of most of the people. That "Why wouldn't you reject these people. They're awful." line is based on the fact that a majority of Americans allowed Trump to become elected. Either through actively voting for him or whatever excuse they want to use for not voting at all against outright fascism. First time he was elected an argument could be made that the people who didn't vote or who voted for him were misled. At this point? It just became abundantly clear that our neighbors to the south genuinely don't seem to care about anything or harbor a deep amount of hatred or ignorance within themselves.
Review should have gone a bit harder in my opinion. It isn't just the government or the country itself that is an embarassment. Most of the people are too.
And let me be abundantly clear. If whoever is reading this voted for anyone other than Kamala, or did not vote at all, yes. You're the awful people we're talking about. You should really hate yourself as much as we hate you.
Canadian here, can confirm. This is pretty much how just about everyone I talk to feels about the situation. And I work in the trades in Alberta. Even my dumbest trump friends don’t want to be American. There will be boots to the fucking ground if our government tries to allow America to annex us.
Reminds me a bit of how it was in Germany at the beginning of the Iraq war (2). Plenty of Americans saying we should be bombed back to the stone age for not going to Iraq, while our soldiers were dying in Afghanistan. I remember in all the bulletin boards people would kind of cheer for American losses, hoping secretly or sometimes openly that Iraq would win, and the schoolyard bully would get another bloody nose.
That's the moment large parts of my generation became anti-american.
Christ. I'm from Newfoundland but also (surprising literally zero Canadians) lived in Fort McMurray and other parts of Alberta for a time. The idea of them reacting like that up there now is kind of astounding. I remember when Trudeau was elected. I was living just outside of Calgary at the time. I remember people flying American flags saying they wanted to leave and join the US as a whole other state.
Man. You have to fuck up royally to get dimwit dipshit Albertans and other Canadians to go "Nah, we'll pass there buddy."
As mentioned I'm from NFLD. Specifically from the Gander area and of an age to vividly remember all of the planes landing in Gander. All the shitloads of people, mostly Americans, who were stranded and afraid. We had a Texan couple stay in our house for a couple of days until the planes were ready to go. There is a musical play called Come From Away that I cannot recommend enough about what happened. Got our accent and music right but also the feel of what was going on. I'm super proud to have lived during that and while I was just a kid? I am super proud of how we all acted. Most people got taken into homes and taken care of until their planes were ready to go. Not to mention all the work setting up emergency areas for people to stay and food and everything else. It truly was a community effort.
The towns have been informally polling ourselves on Facebook and other places to see how we'd all react if 9/11 happened today. The overwhelming majority of us reacted with "Fuck them. They're staying on the planes or limited to the airport." with some people saying the planes should be outright rejected for fear of it being a ploy of Americans trying to invade Newfoundland.
Just to let you non-Canadians know something... You know how Canadians are called the most polite people on the planet? Newfies are usually said to be the most polite of the Canadians.
About half of America would join Canada in fighting this tyranny. I think it would be a grave mistake for Trump’s presidency to follow through on these threats.
And America would lose. Violently. They may successfully annex the country but they would never win.
If America invades Canada then the only thing that has happened is guaranteed your own demise. You have a border with us that isn't defensible and we look exactly like you. We sound exactly like you. We are taught the same things as you are and because of your loud as shit TV, we're plugged into the same pop culture. We can pass every single test to come off as an American.
America invades Canada and guerilla warfare becomes instaneous. You would have to literally kill every single Canadian who has a problem with the invasion because otherwise the extreme Anti-American hatred will only grow and foster until the United States is constantly being bombarded by "domestic terrorists" from a nation that never wanted to be a part of your shitheap in the first place.
People keep thinking about war with drones and tanks and soldiers. If you're going to another country and trying to pound them into submission like the Americans or Russians? Sure. But it is a very different thing entirely when a fishing vessel packed with fertilizer detonates inside of a port or harbor or when multiple explosives are set off devastating your insanely aging and woefully unprotected bridges and railways. Or those pipelines that go on forever with massive areas of nothing and no one in between. Cause an ecological spill you can't recover from. Maybe even the power grid that your states have idiotically decided to seperate? We could cripple Texas with a bunch of Albertans. Or we could just go through your farming states spreading weeds everywhere. Start planting Kudzu everywhere across the US. Start burning forests that prevent your dustbowl from reoccuring. You are so fucking easy to destroy.
You guys protect all the wrong things and you do not need to be a terrorist to realize how insanely inadequate the protections would be from attacks within.
Americans like to think of themselves as heroes, fighting for what's right, upholding the constitution etc. But if you look at history Americans again and again chose to simply do nothing. You reached late Roman decadence.
Here a candidate voted with the far right and a week later, one million people were on the streets. Population adjusted that would be 5 million Americans. That was a small protest for us. And that's nothing compared to the French. I looked at the biggest American demonstrations and this one demo, a regular Sunday for us, would have been the third biggest in the US, population adjusted, or the seventh biggest, not adjusted.
All these talks of civil war.. You cannot even move your ass to go to a demo. You think regular Americans are actually going to look at a Bradley, who can kill all the inhabitants of a house with one shot, and go like "yep, time to strap on the suicide vest!"
Even those militia types.. Look at them. How far do you think they can run on average? How far with a backpack? They are just LARPing. 80% will stay home, 4% will go back home after the beer runs out, 15% will rat the others out to the Gestapo.
I don't think that many would involve themselves in this war. Luckily, you don't need that many when your are shitting on neighbors, partners, and other military and trade hegemonies.
To be fair, Bagdad is half a world away. The logistics of maintaining something there is astronomically higher than in the same hemisphere, let alone our next door neighbor.
That being said I'm on team annexation... of Minnesota. Please take us!
Surprisingly I don't think I've seen comments from people who live in Maine, New Hampshire or Vermont on the subject online. I never realized just how close those states are to Montreal.
The 51st state?Hard pass. Canada’s healthcare system alone would collapse under the weight of your insulin price gouging. Cherished state? More like a hostile takeover by a country that thinks avocado toast is a personality trait.
Those 25% tariffs? Cute. We survived your 2018 tantrum—maple syrup exports outlived your presidency. Funny how “trade imbalances” vanish when your golf resorts rely on Canadian lumber.
Defense spending critiques from a guy who tried to lease Alaska back to Russia? Bold move. Our border’s secure enough to keep your conspiracy theorists from storming Parliament Hill.
One thing I despise about the US (gun violence and healthcare inequitability aside) is how it measures the value of everything in money.
It's culture is a commodification machine. Nothing can just be beautiful for the sake of being beautiful, it has to be made into a side hustle somehow.
Most Americans are married to their jobs and have little work life balance relative to Canadians and Europeans.
There is a remarkable amount of mental gymnastics done by people trying to gaslight themselves into thinking this is what they want, even though most would be happier and healthier with more time off.
This is going to be the weirdest part of any history book. People reading and trying to understand why the US suddenly turned on and invaded their close ally of Canada in a failed annexation attempt immediately after watching Russia struggle a similar (though less surprising) annexation of Ukraine, which the US helped fight against.
Not even going to lie, the Great Lakes will quickly become Canadian territory if Trump tries to make serious on his claims. Most of the folk in my region love Canadians more than we do people in other states.
Hmm probably hamilton. A lot of steel mills. If they come up through st Catherines, and hang a Reich to Toronto they would have to go through hamilton first.
The US army is much larger and better equipped than the Canadian army. And the US has about 10x the population of Canada and most of the population lives within a few dozen miles of the US border.
Also who is to support Canada with arms to defend against the US invasion? China? Russia? Because South Korea and the EU would first need to purge all the US bases they have.
I think US vs. Canada would play out very different than Ukraine vs. Russia. Could end in a long and bloody incursion, but for the conventional side of things the US would steamroll Canada at first.
Honestly, Canada is a terrible target from a guerrilla warfare perspective. We have vast areas of emptiness that locals are familiar with but are dangerous if you don't know how to survive there, many pocket communities that could easily hide insurgents and weaponry, lots of farming, which means lots of nitrates, a populace that can easily disappear into the American general population, and enough of an identity to not want to be absorbed by a different culture.
I don't think we could stop America from invading and occupying, but we could make Vietnam look like a walk in the park. So, who's up for another couple decades of occupation?
The US army is much larger and better equipped than the Canadian army.
What % of the US army would be happy to obey an order to invade Canada. At what level if seniority? What justification could be given to sure up the troops?
Holding a country that doesn’t want to be held, that no one else wants you to occupy, is very different than winning it, as the US and other countries have repeatedly learned.
And the unpopularity at home would make Vietnam look like nothing.
No, it would be a disaster for the US. A very different one than Ukraine, but maybe even worse.
An invasion of Canada would result in so many Americans defecting and fighting for Canada or not cooperating and probably a Civil War when the west coast states (and possibly New England) secede. I imagine the military leadership would sooner stage a coup than cooperate and invade/occupy Canada. Plus, the entire world would side with Canada.
It’s the ramblings of a senile buffoon. There’s absolutely no one else calling for this (or invading Greenland/Panama) and no support from 80% of Americans — and close to 100% with people of fighting age. Even most MAGA idiots are isolationists.
And don’t forget, basically every major U.S. city is extremely blue. When you look at a red state/blue state map, remember that it’s actually an urban/rural divide. Port cities are especially blue. (Look at Louisiana for an example. A deep red state but Orleans Parish went 82% for Harris/Walz. Good luck winning any war with 90% of the port cities in full revolt.)
At this point, I'm seriously wondering what the Reichstag fire will be that will prompt the US to conjure up an "enemy without," steamroll several sovereign countries and blockade the Mediterranean and most of the Atlantic.
The US has been a rogue state for decades. Just that they used to be smart enough to keep some countries in the empire aligned without direct military force.
Well the veneer of respectability politics scratched. It's like people getting drunk it's not that alcohol makes violent, or sobby, or anything in particular: It disinhibits (by anaesthetising the frontal lobe before everything else), allowing already-existing but usually under control tendencies to break through.
Cherished my ass. You've done nothing but disrespect them since you were elected. The only thing you want is their resources so you can hoard a few 100 mil before you kick the bucket in a few years. Which I find completely ridiculous because it's not like you get to take money into the afterlife, if there even is one.
Resources is definitely true but it also concerned me a bit that the three countries he targetted (Panama, Greenland, Canada) are all countries that control major trade routes. Panama shouldn't need to be explained but Canada has St. Lawrence Seaway that goes into the Great Lakes and Canada also controls (with Greenland to an extent) the Northwest Passage that is becoming more navigatable every year.
My grandfather was in Alsace-Lorraine during the German occupation in WWII. Thanks to a warning from a neighboring village he barely escaped being drafted into the Nazi army and had to go into hiding, surviving in the forest on his own until the end of the war. He never admitted whether he ever had to kill someone or not. But my mother remembers hearing him scream every night from the nightmares.
Now I'm in Canada and I'm wondering if this kind of thing is going to become a family tradition.
This crazy old poopy pants manchild is serious in that he wants to blackmail people into giving him something for nothing. Thankfully, he's so fucking stupid, and has created a cesspool of asskissers around him who are incentivized to suck up rather than actually DO anything.
He talks, says a lot of crazy shit, then backs down, having done damage and not actually gotten anything. Like being in a shortbus with a hormonal chimp with a chainsaw. We're all just going to have to wait until his inevitable toilet stroke, and then watch the whole thing collapse.
I mean, even though I'm still not fully sure how American elections work, wouldn't Canada be a huge blue state and lead to a lot more of Democrats winning?
kinda. It depends a bit on how we handle some of the stuff. Firstly, despite saying he wants to make Canada a state, he could make it a territory that gets 0 votes, which is straight up bullshit but exactly how it works. If he does make it a state, there's still a lot of uncertainty.
Every state has gets 1 vote per representative. Senate has a fixed 100 members (2 per state). House currently has 435 members, divided by state population. If Canada is brought in as a single state, it would beat out California in size, but not by all that much. If we simply increased the house to accommodate the new state, Canada would have a bit over 52 electoral votes. If we add Canada's 52-ish electoral votes to Kamala's count, she still doesn't have the electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Similarly, adding Canada's 52-ish votes to Hillary's count means she still loses. Literally giving Canada's votes to the Dem candidate does not affect the last few elections results in a meaningful way. In fact, it would change almost none of the elections we've had in the last, like, ever.
However, that assumes they simply give Canada new reps, rather than redistributing the current ones. If they did a redistribution, electoral votes would be taken from the largest states. Any states with 3 electoral votes can't have that reduced at all, and those with like 4-8 are unlikely to get the count reduced. Redistributing will affect California the most, followed by Texas, Florida, New York and so on. It's... harder to analyze how that shift would shake out, but I wager still not particularly favorable shifts for blue states in general, meaning dems can't actually expect an increase of 50-ish in that case, which means even less of a chance of flipping any results.
However, perhaps Canada gets split into a bunch of individual states rather than all one. If we assume each province-state gets 2 senate members and they collectively get 50 house members, you end up with 70 electoral votes (ignoring territories). If those all swing blue, Trump still wins 2016 and 2024. Both of those become far closer (2016 becomes 302 to 306 and 2024 becomes 296 to 312), presumably uncomfortably close.
And that's assuming they all vote solid (D), actually get voting rights, voting is still free and fair, and voter suppression hasn't become even more outlandish by then.
Anyways, our electoral vote system blows real bad.
Ah yes, sure, but you see with the magic of gerrymandering, they could bring them in but make sure all their votes collectively count about as much as 3 rednecks in Alabama, so don't you worry about this pesky little detail.
I think Americans who don't agree with trump should raise the Canadian flag.
When someone go outside, beat people up, come home, they are mostly likely will beat whoever at home when they speak up.
Throughout last year, the US didn't stop supporting the war crimes of Israel, either by providing them with money, weapons, and sending American soldier to the area just in case. Canadian didn't say much and kept quiet. Now Trump picking up the legacy of the United States foreign policy back home.
Canada should make it clear that they are not taking these statements as joke and expell the US ambassador.
Just imagine if Indea or China or even Russia said the same.
What crazy is that, I didn't hear any statement so far from Canadian allies to denounce trump statement.
The more he focuses on this instead of ruining the lives of migrants, refugees, and queer people, the better. This is absurd enough to be funny instead of just stoking hate crimes.
Sure the economic consequences are really bad but just starting a trade war for the sake of being a messy bitch and no other apparent reason is kinda funny.
Yes please. I’d love to say I’m a Canadian resident instead of a United Corporations of America resident. Especially without needing to move more North where it’s colder!
I seriously doubt the top brass would obey orders to invade Canada. The administration knows this as well and there will be a blitzkrieg of military firing coming very, very soon.
Not sure how that plays though, they can't go too fast without alienating the entire armed services.
Say shit about Canada, our friends. Stoke anti America shit. Decrease odds of friendly relations.
Might as well.
Edit: not like people aren't already talking, or woe is us, it's just... bullshit. It's like someone who hates Lincoln Park going up to people and making annoying statements about the band being the greatest and shitting on other music, hoping some people get mad and start trashing Lincoln Park. It's a circus.
If I understand correctly Canada has a kind of similar worldview as Nordic countries. Traiding that to a right wing capitalist shit hole like US would be a no go.