Victor Davis Hanson
Canada. Part One
Trump has been waging a running verbal battle with Canada. And it is based on four of his own pet peeves.
One, he despises Canadian Liberal Party leader and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who in the past has openly sided with Trump’s political opponents in 2016, 2020, and 2024. To Trump, the man-boy, girlish Trudeau represents the Eurocentric, effete, leftwing leader whom he typically writes off as weak and obnoxious.
Trump’s way of expressing his dislike is to troll Canada itself, continuously so, as if it is soon to become an appendage of the U.S.—our “51st state,” a sort of de facto afterthought of America. So, he calls Trudeau “Governor Trudeau.”
Trump is no more serious about absorbing Canada than he was invading Panama or annexing Greenland. Making Canada part of the U.S. would be an ungodly disaster for both sides—despite adding the fourth-largest nation by area to our own America.
Its 41 million population (ca. the size of California) is mostly to the left of the U.S. Canadians are inured to socialized medicine, government controls on industry, and European statism, in a way foreign to a Jacksonian America.
So, no one, especially Trump, is serious about making America any more leftwing than it already is becoming—and that includes even inviting more conservative, naturally rich Alberta, into the United States.
Note that no sane person wants statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico (independence, yes?) and four instant leftwing senators. So too Canada in that sense would be even worse, given we’d also have to create and then allot over 50 House seats to the Left.
Instead, Trump is trolling, in art-of-the-deal style by bombast, exaggeration, surreal threats, and fantasies, to emphasize something very real: Canada is not the Canada of old, but heading in the European direction of open borders, DEI/multiculturalism/boutique anti-Americanism, China appeasement, and loud globalist virtue signaling on issues from transgenderism to radical green mandates.
The irony is that Trudeau’s likely liberal successor Mark Carney will not be much different and yet likely would have lost the Liberal’s control of Canada in the impending election—ensuring the election of a real conservative and pro-American Pierre Poilievre.
That is, until Trump aroused Canada’s dormant nationalism that apparently has translated into any liberal who did not like the U.S. was preferable over any conservative who did, such as Poilievre.
But take Trudeau out of the equation, and put Poilievre in, and there is still a rift.
Second, Canada, our largest trading partner, is running a $63 billion trade surplus with the U.S. Our deficit is largely due to some of Canada’s asymmetrical protectionist tariffs placed on American lumber and agricultural goods, along with the huge amount of oil, gas, and electricity we import from it.
In Trump’s mind, Canada could lower its farm and timber subsidies and tariffs and keep our deficits down to below, say, $10 billion.
So why does Canada continue to run surpluses with its ostensibly best and most alike friend? Answer, largely because it assumes, as it has for decades, that America is always limitlessly rich, never gets into petty tit-for-tat trade wars for long, and won’t mind helping its poorer neighbor (Canada’s per capita income is about like Mississippi’s).
But with a $37 trillion debt and a hollowed-out industrial heartland, we now most certainly do mind.
Third, Trump is also furious about the open Canadian border across which illegal aliens and drugs pass freely—a fact that the smug Trudeau until recently grinned and shrugged off. In truth, little fentanyl, in comparison to Mexican influxes, comes across, and far fewer illegals.
But Trump believes as a fellow former British colony and same-speaking nation, we should have zero problems along our once legendary calm, unenforced, and model border.
Fourth, Canada also spends only about 1.3% of its GDP on defense, serially violating its NATO member promises to invest 2% of GDP on the military.
It should be eager to partner with its gargantuan neighbor to protect the North American Arctic Circle. (Canada in World War II, remember, was a major and trusted ally, with a huge navy, an entire First Canadian Army landing on its own assigned Juno Beach on D-Day, and 1.1 million quite formidable soldiers in uniform, whose heroic presence saved lots of American lives.)
Canada should be partnering with us to craft a North American, iron-dome-like missile defense system, building a fleet of ice-breakers to keep the Russians and Chinese out, and keeping a division or two of combat troops on alert for any sudden shared emergency.
Instead, the attitude is something more like: 1) “Crazy Trump will be gone soon, and we will enjoy a compliant Obama or Biden again, so just wait him out”; 2) “America likes wars and building weapons. So let them do their thing and leave us alone”; 3) “We are smothered by rich, intrusive American culture, so give us at least one break by running up a modest trade surplus with you”; and 4) “Border/smorder, big deal, compared to your southern mess your northern border with us is small stuff. So, chill out.”
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