Canada’s outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested that President-elect Trump’s suggestion that Canada become America’s ’51st state’ was a distraction from the tariff threat.
‘I know that as a successful negotiator, he likes to keep people a little off balance. The 51st state, that’s not going to happen,’ Trudeau told MSNBC’s ‘Inside with Jen Psaki’ on Sunday. ‘It’s just a non-starter. Canadians are incredibly proud of being Canadian. But people are now talking about that, as opposed to talking about what impact 25% tariffs [has] on steel and aluminum coming into the United States, on energy, whether it’s oil and gas or electricity.’
‘No American wants to pay 25% more for electricity or oil and gas coming in from Canada,’ Trudeau said in the interview with Psaki, President Biden’s former White House press secretary. ‘That’s something I think people need to pay a little more attention to. And perhaps the idea of a 51st state is distracting a little bit from a very real question that will increase the cost of living for Americans and harm a trading relationship that works extremely well.’
Trump has threatened to impose 25% tariffs on all Canadian imports. The president-elect also said that if Canada merged with the U.S., taxes would decrease and there would be no tariffs.
The president-elect has also taken shots at Trudeau, referring to him as the ‘governor’ of Canada. Last Monday, Trudeau announced that he would resign as Canada’s prime minister once his Liberal Party chooses a new leader on March 9.
‘From my very first conversations with him back in 2016, he told me how much he admires Canada, how much he appreciates and likes us, so there is a certain amount of flattery in this that he thinks that we are as great as we are,’ Trudeau said of Trump on Sunday. ‘He’s right, we are great. We’re also very, very proud of being Canadian. If you talk to any Canadian, you ask them to define what it is to be Canadian, they’ll talk about all sorts of different things, but one of the things we will point out is, ‘and we’re not Americans.’’
On Trudeau’s trip to Mar-a-Lago in November, the Canadian prime minister said the topic of the U.S. annexing Canada did come up, but Trudeau said once he joked that Canada could annex Vermont or California as a sort of trade, Trump ‘immediately decided it was not that funny anymore, and we moved on to a different conversation.’
‘This isn’t out of the blue that he’s doing this, but my focus has to be not on something that he’s talking about that will not ever happen, but more on something that might well happen, that if he does choose to go forward with tariffs that raise the costs of just about everything for American citizens, that on top of that, we’re going to have a robust response to that,’ Trudeau said.
‘We are ready to respond with tariffs as necessary,’ Trudeau said.
Canadian officials say that if Trump follows through with his threat of punishing tariffs, Canada would consider slapping retaliatory tariffs on American orange juice, toilets and some steel products.
Trudeau recalled that Trump previously put tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum during his first term, and Canada responded by putting tariffs on bourbon, Harley Davidson motorcycles, orange juice, playing cards and other such items that Trudeau argued Canadians could easily find replacements for.
‘It ended up causing a lot of loss in American businesses for whom Canada is their number one export partner. We are the number one export partner for about 35 different U.S. states, and anything that thickens the border between us ends up costing American citizens and American jobs. That’s not what President Trump got elected to do,’ Trudeau said. ‘I know he got elected to try and make life easier for all Americans, to support American workers. These are things that are going to hurt them.’
Trump said last week that the U.S. does not need oil – or anything else – from Canada, but almost a quarter of the oil that the U.S. consumes each day comes from Canada. The energy-rich western province of Alberta exports 4.3 million barrels of oil a day to the U.S., according to the Associated Press. Data from the United States Energy Information Administration shows that the U.S. consumes 20 million barrels a day, and produces about 13.2 million barrels a day.
Canada, a founding partner of NATO and home to more than 40 million people, is also the top export destination for 36 U.S. states. Nearly $2.7 billion worth of goods and services cross the border each day.
Trump has said that he would reconsider his tariff threat if Canada made improvements in managing security at the Canada-U.S. border, which he and his advisers see as a potential entry point for illegal immigrants.
Trudeau has said that less than 1% of illegal immigrants and fentanyl cross into the U.S. from Canada.
Nevertheless, after his meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Trudeau announced an increase in spending on border security, expressing willingness to address Trump’s concerns in hopes that he would reconsider his tariff threat.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.