A Trump’s Eye View of Canada
It is hard to say how much direct knowledge of Canada anyone in Trump’s coterie has, or what and whom their sources of information on Canada are.
Donald Trump has made various statements about Canada, dating from November 25, when he first posted that he would impose a 25% tariff on all Canadian goods entering the United States. He has claimed that the tariffs are essentially a bargaining tool to force Canada to discuss border security in regard to immigration and drug smuggling, at other times to complain about the American bilateral trade deficit with Canada and perhaps to accelerate the scheduled 2026 review of the United States-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement, as a tool to press Canada to increase defense spending to the 2.0% of GDP NATO threshold, and finally to call for the United States to annex Canada and admit it to the country as a single state. It is an understatement to say that Trump’s rhetoric challenges the analyst, for it often seems to be the ranting of a single person who is skillful at social media, yet, at the risk of being guilty of a bit of “sanewashing,” there are elements of a view of Canada that come through the rhetoric.
Border security, the drug trade, the bilateral trade balance, and military spending are all long standing issues in the bilateral relationship. The two countries regularly have diplomatic consultations on all of them, and a simple request from the United States for talks would have brought the Canadians to the table quickly. The actions that Trump has demanded of Canada would be reasonable in another context, and Canadian commentators are quick to point out that attention to these matters is likely in the Canadian national interest regardless of anything going on in Washington. To be sure, toddler-like petulance has long been part of Trump’s approach to negotiation, and since Nixon, political scientists have spoken of a “madman theory” to convey a fear many allies have of an irrational American president.
But is there a broader view of Canada behind Trump’s rhetoric, and is it a real policy goal we will see implemented (or attempted to be implemented) over the next four years? We can read this in the context of Trump’s remarks about purchasing Greenland from Denmark and reestablishing the Panama Canal Zone by force. Trump’s recent statements echo the Gilded Age period, particularly the presidency of William McKinley, in which tariffs were raised and the United States used the Spanish-American War to annex Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. That round of expansion built on the idea of Manifest Destiny, expansion within North America, that undergirded American foreign policy for most of the 19th century. The notion of acquiring Canada was a recurring idea in American political debate from the American Revolution through the aftermath of the Civil War, to the extent that fear of attack was an important motive behind the formation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867. McKinley himself never called for annexation, but as late as 1911, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Champ Clark, argued in favor of the ratification of a Canada-United States reciprocity agreement because he viewed it as the first step in annexation (it probably torpedoed the agreement by helping Robert Borden’s Conservatives to win that year’s election).
Annexation was, however, a favorite theme of conservatives in the United States, whose nationalism was expansionist. Canadian conservatives at the time, on the other hand, were avid monarchists who cherished Canada’s place in the British Empire, which made them somewhat anti-American because the United States was born of rebellion against the monarchy. There was, however, a strain of free-market liberal, foreshadowing those of the later 20th century, who argued that economics necessarily pushed for a North American economic and perhaps political union. The seminal work putting this argument forward came from Goldwin Smith, in his 1891 book Canada and the Canadian Question. Smith, a British-Canadian historian and journalist, examined Canada's relationship with Britain, its potential for independence, and its ties to the United States. He also discussed the challenges of Canadian nation-building, including the divide between English and French Canadians, the vast geography of the country, and its economic dependence on natural resources. He concluded that Canada lacked a material basis for existence as a separate state, arguing that the economic structure of North America had a north-south logic, and that the creation of Canada as a political unit was artificial. (He also argued that the attempt to unite English and French into a single state was also artificial, and that French Canada was destined to assimilate.) Canada's vast and sparsely populated landscape made it difficult to govern and develop infrastructure effectively. Smith believed that the United States, with its experience in managing a large continental territory, could better integrate Canada's regions into a cohesive whole. Smith was skeptical of Canada's ability to achieve true independence while maintaining its ties to the British Empire. He viewed Canada's colonial status as anachronistic and believed that full independence would leave the country isolated and vulnerable. He argued that annexation to the United States would also allow Canada to escape the constraints of British colonialism.
It is hard to say how much direct knowledge of Canada anyone in Trump’s coterie has, or what and whom their sources of information on Canada are. There are some connections between Trumpists and the more extreme elements of the Canadian Right, as we saw during the Freedom Convoy in 2022. There is also clear antagonism between Trump’s faction and the Liberal Party of Canada as led by Justin Trudeau, be it focused on Trump’s obvious personal distaste for Trudeau, especially after their clash around the G-7 Summit in 2018, along with a general dislike of Canadian left-liberalism as the Liberals have advanced it since the 1960s. However, Trump and his entourage have known exactly how to poke at Canada in order to destabilize it. It is as though someone at Mar a Lago had read Margaret Atwood’s 1972 book Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature, in which she wrote "Canadians are forever taking the national pulse like doctors at a sickbed; the aim is not to see whether the patient will live well but simply whether he will live at all." Perhaps they also had read Richard Rohmer’s 1970s novels Ultimatum and Exxoneration and realized the nook of the Canadian psyche they were addressing
What is missing from Trump–so far–is a serious attempt to pick at the third rail of Canadian politics: national unity. Trump’s closest allies in Canada are conservative provincial parties in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, three provinces whose economic ties to the United States rival those to the rest of Canada. The premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith, met with Trump at Mar a Lago before his inauguration and seems to have asked him to treat Alberta more gently if he imposed tariffs, which he may have done had he kept tariffs on Canadian energy at 10% instead of 25%. However, Trump could have easily tried to goad Canada by exempting oil, or anything coming from Alberta, entirely, tempting Ottawa to impose an embargo or export tax on Alberta oil, provoking a national unity crisis. Similarly, Trump has stayed away from the issue of Quebec, nor have many in Quebec noted that being a region of a single 51st state, the Government of Quebec apparently dissolved, would be far from stable. Only this week did right-wing Quebec nationalist Mathieu Bock-Côté call for Quebec to become independent (which, to be sure, he already advocates unconditionally) were the United States to annex Canada. No one in Trump’s camp has apparently thought of reaching out to the Parti Quebecois, which currently leads in the polls and advocates a third sovereignty referendum if it forms the government after the 2026 election.
One may call Trump’s invocation of annexation a surprise, but it is not ahistorical. It is merely another facet of Trump 2.0’s fascination with late 19th century American politics. At the same time, it has the potential to cause destabilizing mischief in Canadian politics depending on how he provokes Alberta and Quebec.
References:
https://thewalrus.ca/canada-has-spent-over-a-century-avoiding-collapse-can-it-keep-going/
https://thewalrus.ca/how-an-unstable-us-threatens-canadas-national-security/
https://thewalrus.ca/the-historical-roots-of-trumps-anger-with-canada/
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2837744-exxoneration
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/3923641-ultimatum
https://thewalrus.ca/trump-tariffs/
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/91032592
https://archive.org/details/survivalthematic0000atwo
https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2025/02/04/lempire-nord-americain-de-donald-trump
https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2025/02/05/le-temps-des-empires-est-revenu