Unpacking Trump’s latest broadside about Canada as a ’51st state’ | CBC News

U.S. president-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday once again posted favourably about Canada becoming the 51st state, calling it a “great idea.”

“No one can answer why we subsidize Canada to the tune of over $100,000,000 a year? Makes no sense! Many Canadians want Canada to become the 51st State,” he posted on Truth Social. “They would save massively on taxes and military protection.”

Trump has made a series of statements and social media posts since his Nov. 5 election win mocking Canada and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, previously referring him to as “governor” of the 51st state.

Earlier this week, Trump reacted to the stunning resignation of Chrystia Freeland from cabinet, calling her “toxic.”

Freeland was intensively involved in trade talks with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer during Trump’s first term. The pair, along with a top Mexican official, signed the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, or CUSMA, in 2019, updating the previous North American Free Trade Agreement. 

Trump has threatened that when he becomes president next month he will impose massive tariffs on all goods from Canada unless it stops the flow of migrants and illegal drugs into the U.S.

Repeating an old trade-deficit claim?

While some suggest Trump is just engaged in trolling, others suggest the threat is an effective political tactic.

“It’s to dominate and intimidate, he’s been very successful at using those strategies, and typical politicians don’t usually know how to respond,” Jennifer Mercieca, Texas A&M communications professor and author of Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump, told CBC News recently.

Mercieca said Trump’s humour has the consequence of creating an “in group and out group,” putting people into different divisions.

It’s not specifically clear where the $100,000,000 came from that Trump is quoting, though it appears he is repeating a figure that is seven years old based on statements made at the time by Lighthizer.

According to reporting by CBC’s Evan Dyer at the time, Lighthizer cited a figure in his export calculations that included goods that pass through Canada but don’t originate here as Canadian exports, artificially inflating the United States’s trade deficit in goods with Canada.

The figure did not take into account trade in services, and either Lightizer or staff on his behalf appeared to misinterpret Statistics Canada, reaching conclusions at odds with even data from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Trump has long been chagrined by U.S. trade deficits with other countries, though some economists argue that a trade deficit alone does not offer a full accounting of the health of an economy.

“A larger trade deficit can be the result of a stronger economy, as consumers spend and import more while higher interest rates make foreign investors more eager to place their money in the United States,” said the think-tank Council on Foreign Relations in a 2019 report.

Canada’s defence spending under scrutiny

Previous U.S. presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama urged NATO alliance members to bolster domestic defence spending, and in 2014, NATO members agreed to commit two per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP) to defence spending over the subsequent decade. At the time, Canada was spending only 0.9 percent of its GDP on defence.

Trump in his first presidential campaign and subsequent term in office has railed at alliance members and incorrectly stated they are “delinquent” in spending.

It is now estimated that Canada’s military spending is between 1.3 and 1.4 per cent of its GDP.

This summer, Trudeau told a meeting of parliamentarians from NATO nations that Canada is on track to meet its commitment to spend two per cent of GDP on defence by 2032, a pledge that has been met coolly in the U.S.

Canada and other countries should hit the NATO-imposed target of spending two per cent of GDP “as rapidly as humanly possible,” U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said, while Republican congressman Jim Risch of Idaho last month suggested that Trump would let out a “very large guffaw” at Canada’s current timeline.

Canada’s federal Defence Minister Bill Blair said in recent weeks he was “ready to go faster,” and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte earlier this month issued a clarion call to alliance members to increase their defence spending to a “lot more than two per cent.” Alliance members need to be on a “wartime footing” with their defence spending, he said.

Some analysts have said the flat metric can provide an incomplete picture.

“Spending at two per cent says very little about a country’s actual military capabilities; its readiness, deployability, and
sustainability levels; and the quality of the force that it can field,” the think-tank Carnegie Europe said in a 2015 report. 

As well, despite a $38-billion modernization package announced by the Liberal government in 2022, Canada’s commitments to the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) have also come under scrunity.

Blair said last month that he is asking for help from the U.S. because much of what the Canadian Armed Forces has to acquire comes from American corporations and defence contractors.

Canadians cool to being 51st

A recent Leger poll suggests 13 per cent of Canadians would like the country to become the next U.S. state. The demographic breakdowns show there’s higher support among men, at 19 per cent, compared with only seven per cent of women.

Conservative party supporters came in at 21 per cent, while one in 10 Liberal voters said they were in favour of the idea. The People’s Party of Canada showed the highest level of endorsement among the federal parties, at 25 per cent, while the NDP was the lowest, at six per cent.

Among the overall population, 82 per cent opposed the idea, the highest of which comes from Atlantic provinces, women and Canadians over the age of 55. Leger polled 1,520 people between Dec. 6 and Dec. 9. The poll does not have a margin of error because online polls aren’t considered truly random samples.

It’s not a question Canadians have often been surveyed on, though it has happened in the past.

A Gallup poll in 1990 around the time of heated Meech Lake accord negotiations revealed that just 13 per cent of those surveyed would support the idea of their province joining the United States, with 79 per cent opposed.

In 1964, Maclean’s ran a special issue covering U.S.-Canada relations. In a poll commissioned by the magazine and a few other Canadian media outlets, including the CBC program Inquiry, 17 per cent favoured a union of Canada and the U.S., and an additional 12 per cent strongly favoured a union.

Canadians sounded off on the prospect of becoming part of the United States on the most recent episode of CBC’s Cross Country Checkup.

You can hear to what listeners had to say here: