Trump says he will use ‘economic force’ against Canada

PTI, Jan 8, 2025, 8:05 AM IST

Donald Trump (Credit: Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons)

Washington: US President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he will use “economic force” to make Canada a part of the United States, a comment that attracted sharp reaction from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “No,” Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago in Florida when asked if he is considering military force to annex and acquire Canada. Over the past few weeks, Trump has asserted that he wants to make Canada part of the United States and its 51st state. Many times, he has been mocking Trudeau as the Governor of Canada.

“(I will be using) economic force because Canada and the United States, that would really be something. You get rid of that artificially drawn line and you take a look at what that looks like, and it would also be much better for national security. Don’t forget, we basically protect Canada,” Trump said.

Trudeau, who resigned as the prime minister of Canada a day earlier, responded sharply on social media. “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States,” he said in a post on X.

“Workers and communities in both our countries benefit from being each other’s biggest trading and security partner,” Trudeau said.

Trump said he loves the people of Canada, but the United States can no longer financially support Canada.

“I love the Canadian people, they’re great. But we’re spending hundreds of billions a year to protect it. We’re spending hundreds of billions a year to take care of Canada. We lose in trade deficits we’re losing massive — we don’t need their cars. You know, they make 20 per cent of our cars. We don’t need that. I’d rather make them in Detroit,” he asserted.

“We don’t need the cars; we don’t need their lumber. We have massive fields of lumber. We don’t need their lumber. We have to un-restrict them because stupid people put restrictions on, but I can do that with an executive order. We don’t need anything they have. We don’t need their dairy products, we have more than they have. We don’t need anything,” he said.

“So, why are we losing USD 200 billion a year and more to protect Canada? And I said that to, as I called him, Governor Trudeau, I said, listen, what would happen if we didn’t subsidise you, … Here’s what we have, we have a right not to help them with their financial difficulties because we owe USD 36 trillion too. We’re going to start knocking it out pretty fast, but we’re going to be able to do it because of energy and other things. But why are we supporting a country USD 200 billion plus a year?” he said.

“Our military is at their disposal, all of these other things. They should be a state. That’s why I told Trudeau when he came down. I said what would happen if we didn’t do it. He said Canada would dissolve. Canada wouldn’t be able to function if we didn’t take their 20 per cent of our car market.

“Again, they send us hundreds of thousands of cars. They make a lot of money with that. They send us a lot of other things that we don’t need. We don’t need their cars, and we don’t need the other products. We don’t need their milk. We’ve got a lot of milk; we’ve got a lot of everything, and we don’t need any of it,” Trump said.

“So, I said to him, well, why are we doing it? He said I don’t really know. He was unable to answer the question, but I can answer it. We’re doing it because of habit and we’re doing it because we like our neighbours and we’ve been good neighbours. But we can’t do it forever and it’s a tremendous amount of money. Why should we have a USD 200 billion deficit and add on to that many, many other things that we give them in terms of subsidy?” he said.

“I said that’s okay to have if you’re a state, but if you’re another country, we don’t want to have it. We’re not going to have it with the European Union either. European Union, we have a trade deficit of USD 350 billion. They don’t take our cars, they don’t take our farm products, they don’t take anything. And so, we’re not going to have it with them either,” Trump said.