Word War: Trump Calls Canada ‘One of the Nastiest Countries to Deal With’

Take a moment and let your mind consider just the possibility that a new president wanted to improve our trading position with Canada and increase American domestic production – the only two legitimate justifications for throwing the relationship into turmoil.

Even if that were the goal, gratuitously insulting the nation while denying its very right to sovereignty is likely the worst way to go about it. Yet despite the fact that the markets and even with members of his own party are against the chaotic talk about tariffs and making Canada a “51st state,” President Donald Trump not only refuses to pull back, he continues to push and push, leaving everyone to guess at exactly what it is that he wants.

By all appearances, he is starting to truly believe that he has a chance of “forcing” Canada to become a state. But that only leaves him looking wholly out of touch and willing to throw U.S. interests overboard in pursuit of his great white north whale.

It is bad enough that even Laura Ingraham appeared to call him out last night. She asked why Trump treated Canada worse than some of our adversaries. He justified it by immediately taking steps to enlist Canada as an adversary, calling the Canadian government (Canada!) “nasty.”

“I deal with every country, indirectly or directly. One of the nastiest countries to deal with is Canada,” Trump said. When pressed by Ingraham on why Trump was apparently “tougher” on Canada than America’s “adversaries,” Trump responded: “Only because it’s meant to be our 51st state.”

A trade deficit is not a subsidy, nor is it Canada’s fault that we buy more of their sh*t than they do ours. We have a few more people, they have a ton of room and lots of stuff. It is a mystery as to how many Fox viewers actually believe that we send Canada $200 billion a year in cash but even if we did – and we don’t, but if we did, is that Canada’s fault? Perhaps a new paradigm where “We only sell you stuff” would be in order. But he can’t say that because that’s already the deal. As for national defense, Canada has its own military forces – we know because they served alongside us in Afghanistan and help run NORAD. This is crazy enough that a wall on the border might actually come into play – theirs.

Trump might be able to make all of this interesting by offering Canada the chance to become states 51-60 – one state for each of the 10 provinces and put the territories in with Alaska, or something. Flip almost 20% of the federal government to Canada, adopt their national healthcare system for all who want it – and allow Justin Trudeau to run for “President” of the United States of North America.

See what happens, sweeten the deal. As it is the Canadians couldn’t possibly be clearer in rebuffing this painful advance. They would probably tell us to go pound snow even if we offered them ten states. Still, it might be fun for a while.

This isn’t fun. It is really hurting a relationship that benefitted both nations. It is nearly impossible to see how Americans gain anything from this. The tariffs have destabilized markets, the immediacy means that the U.S. doesn’t have time to ramp up domestic production, Canadians have canceled travel plans and started a major effort to “buy Canadian” – hurting American business, Trump has almost single-handedly assured that Canada’s Liberal Party wins the next federal election (Conservatives in Canada are a bit afraid of the party that used to be Trump-sympathetic), and it’s not like Congress would let Trump “annex Canada” even if he were to get absurdly aggressive.

There are few moves that could possibly lead to Trump’s impeachment – an attack or insanely motivated move against Canadian sovereignty might well be one. Now name some benefit we derive from all this?

It is really odd. There is also the lingering question as to Trump’s true motivation. It would be difficult for someone to name a faster way to weaken American international strength and domestic economy quicker than shattering what had been our most stable relationships, both economic and otherwise.

Who wins in that situation? It looks really really bad and remains one of the few ways Trump loses some Republican support. Laura Ingraham sounds awfully skeptical. Bartiromo is near crazed about tariffs. If you lose Laura and Maria, can Johnson and Thune be all that far behind? We don’t know – we only know that it looks awful.

And why risk it anyway? It is not like it makes anything “better.” Talking annexation could be playing with fire. Is it any less likely that Canada annexes the West Coast instead? Maybe the Trump administration needs a lesson from South Park – upset Canada enough and they’ll take the first step implementing what we threaten. They built a wall.