Front Burner - Donald Trump threatens to annex Canada

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

With just under two weeks until he re-takes the Oval Office, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has outlined a mind-map of sorts to, as he says, “make Canada the 51st American state.”He has referred to the border separating Canada and the U.S. as an “artificial line,” called Justin Trudeau Canada’s “Governor” and said Canada would “dissolve” without U.S. assistance.At the same time, he’s not ruling out forcibly incorporating the territory of Greenland into the U.S. and seizing control of the Panama Canal, a crucial shipping route.Threat, negotiation tactic, or meaningless bluster? CBC Washington correspondent Katie Simpson unpacks where it’s all coming from.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts 

Every language is a note in the symphony of our heritage. Together, they create a harmony that cannot be silenced. Discover your voice on the new APTN Languages TV channel. This is a CBC Podcast. I love the Canadian people. They're great. Hey, everybody. Jamie here.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump will be back in office in a few short weeks, and if you haven't heard, he has spent the last few days outlining a mind map of sorts to, as he says, make Canada the 51st American state. Essentially an annexation project. He's referred to the border separating Canada and the U.S. as an artificial line, referred to Justin Trudeau as Canada's governor, and said Canada would dissolve without U.S. assistance. But why are we supporting a country, 200 billion plus a year, our military is at their disposal, all of these other things, they should be a state. That's what I told Trudeau when he came down. I said, what would

happen if we didn't do it? He said Canada would dissolve. At the same time, he's not ruling out forcibly incorporating the territory of Greenland, which is currently under the dominion of Denmark, into the US. Same goes for the crucial shipping route, the Panama Canal. Canada, he says, would be subject to economic force, until we, I guess, bend to his will. With the famously unpredictable and rule-breaking Trump, it can be hard to distinguish between meaningless bluster and what actually might be possible.

My colleague Katie Simpson is here, Washington correspondent, and we're going to try to understand what's behind all of this. MUSIC Katie, hi. Thanks so much for coming onto the show. Hello. Thanks for having me. It's always great to talk to you.

So I want to loop back to Greenland and the Panama Canal with you in a bit. But first, first let's talk about what Trump has been saying about Canada. And he really ratcheted stuff up in a press conference. And tell me, what did he say? He held this news conference that lasted more than an hour at Mar-a-Lago at his estate there. And he talked a lot about Canada for an American president. He, first of all, reaffirmed his commitments

to imposing tariffs on Canada. That is something we'll have to circle back and talk about for sure. We're going to put very serious tariffs on Mexico and Canada because Canada, they come through Canada too, and the drugs that are coming through are at record numbers, record numbers. So we're going to make up for that by putting tariffs on Mexico and Canada, substantial tariffs. But he talked about Canada becoming a 51st state. And for the first time we heard out of his mouth, his vision for why he wants to see

something like that happen, whether it is something that is absolutely realistic or not and leaning toward or not. That's the camp that things are in. But he complained about how much the US spends on national security, defense spending, and the cost of protecting Canada. They don't essentially have a military. They have a very small military. They rely on our military.

It's all fine, but they got to pay for that. This has been a longstanding complaint, not just for Donald Trump, but for sort of generations of American presidents who've urged Canada to spend more on national defense and to do more on the world stage. That's sort of a familiar complaint there. But then he really went after Canada when it comes to the trade deficit. Now Canada does sell more goods into the US than the US sells into Canada, and that is because of Canada's energy market and its energy exports. And so there is a trade

imbalance there. He often exaggerates it, as he did at that news conference, but he also sort of mischaracterizes it. He describes it as a subsidy. Why should we have a $200 billion deficit and add on to that many, many other things that we give them in terms of subsidy? And I said, that's okay to have if you're a state. But you know, he's been griping about that stuff for years now, right? He griped about that during his first term. So why the 51st state thing now? I think that he won't stop talking about it.

That's one thing. It's really front of mind for him. One thing I should point out is Jerry Butz, who once served as Justin Trudeau's principal secretary. He says that when these jokes first started happening in recent months, he said, listen, Donald Trump used to say that behind closed doors all the time, but he is consistently and he's being persistent in it now. And the way he's talking about it, he's putting argument behind it. And the other thing to keep in mind, Donald Trump is going into the White House in a very different position than he

was in in 2016. His election then was a bit of a shock. He surrounded himself with people who supported his mission, but there was some resistance trying to keep Donald Trump within the guardrails of the American presidency. We saw how that went through the course of his presidency. But this time around, it's all very different. He feels emboldened. He has a mandate from voters. Republicans won the House and the Senate

and the White House. And he surrounded himself with loyalists and he's made it really, really clear. The number one priority he has when it comes to the people around him is loyalty. So he is more powerful going into this experience the second time. And so when he says things like this, even if it's not realistic that Canada could become

a 51st state, he can do things that make life so much more difficult for Canada and can be just brutal for the Canadian economy. So it's, we're in a really rough position. Like, is there a sense that what he's trying to do is use this 51st state thing to exert even more leverage on us? That very well could be the case. When I speak with experts, it's all about sort of leverage and trying to, you know, make the American position sort of the strongest it can be. Sources I've been speaking with suggest to me that people around Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, they are increasingly convinced that Donald Trump will go ahead with these tariffs. But he

said a couple of other things at this news conference that really stand out that if he were to go forward with them, it would have massive, massive implications for the Canadian economy and, you know, essentially millions of jobs. He talked about how the United States doesn't need Canadian automobiles. The North American auto market is so integrated. And he said, We don't need their cars. You know, they make 20% of our cars.

We don't need that. I'd rather make them in Detroit. We don't need the cars. He said, we don't need their dairy. And we don't need their lumber. We don't need their milk. We got a lot of milk. We have massive fields of lumber. We don't need their lumber. We don't need their milk. We got a lot of milk. We have massive fields of lumber.

We don't need their lumber. Dairy and milk are long-term trade irritants. That's nothing new to hear an American complaining about it. But he's talking about cutting off those aspects of trade completely. That's what he was musing about out loud. And when it comes to the auto sector, if something like that were to happen, it would completely upend those jobs in the auto sector. Think Southwestern Ontario, think Southern Ontario and all of those jobs that depend on that. You know, these kinds of musings, even though, you know, he's saying it at a news conference and we know Trump is prone

to hyperbole, but these kinds of things, if he does decide to push ahead with them, they would be absolutely devastating for the Canadian economy. I know that you talked to sources on both sides of the border. Do you have a sense of how negotiations are moving forward right now? Do we have a clearer idea of what he might want from us that could potentially stop these tariffs from coming down the line that might stop him talking about annexing us as a country? I don't think that's going to stop because you know why? He seems to get a lot of attention from it

and we know he likes that kind of attention and he likes to be a disrupter and this is sort of right into his playbook. Are you also considering military force to annex and acquire Canada? No, 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. But when it comes to the tariff threat, which is all of the talk about 51st state is one thing, but the real immediate threat that is deeply problematic, it's the tariffs. And it is

looking more and more likely like it's going to be reality. When Donald Trump first put out that statement on November 25th on his social media saying listen the border is essentially making the argument the northern and southern border are not secure we need major changes or we're going to impose 25 percent tariffs on both Canada and Mexico. He lumped the problems at the border in together, even though they are completely different situations. But Canada took the threat seriously. So what did we see? We saw Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reconvene the Canada-U.S. Cabinet Committee, and they came up with a plan promising to spend more than a billion dollars to address Donald Trump's concerns, whether it be policing at the border, all of those kinds of things. And while the message was getting through to Americans, we heard from people

who are going to be joining the Trump administration. They all said, yes, we heard about these things. The Trump team was actually touting it as a win. They were putting up press releases, saying things like Donald Trump getting action and he's not even in office yet. So it did permeate that Trump world, but until Donald Trump sits down at that desk and starts signing executive orders and starts revealing them to the public, I don't think anyone's gonna know what his decision is until then.

I just wanna pick up on that thing you said, that he's getting attention for saying, talking about this stuff, like the 51st state stuff. There was this line in The Hill Times that I read today that I really liked. It talked about how Trump's rhetoric also has the benefit of giving fodder to his supporters who have embraced his view of American exceptionalism and dominance abroad and relish seeing liberals overreact to what the president-elect is saying.

I thought that really kind of hit the nail on the head there. And then also, I mean, this is getting a lot of attention on US cable networks and stuff too, right? And just tell me a little bit more about that. It is absolutely getting traction here. It's something that people are keen to talk about. And I always say, if you want to get a sense of how things are going in Donald Trump's orbit, watch a bit of Fox News.

Canada, at first I wanted it, and I tried to divide it into two states. And then I realized we'd be adding Montana basically for the Republicans and electorally like a Texas for the Democrats. And I don't like that. But the fact that they don't want us to take them over makes me want to invade. I want to quench my imperialist thirst. Ontario Premier Doug Ford went on the Jesse Water show. It's an 8 p.m. talk show. He's an opinion columnist, so it's not straight up news. And the way he spoke to Doug Ford about, well, it would be insulting if you don't want to join America. That kind of tone about expansionism and that that's the tone

that we're hearing from these people in Trump world. You say that Americans don't have a problem with Canadians and we don't but it seems like you have a problem with us because if I were a citizen of another country and I was a neighbor of the United States I would consider it a privilege to be taken over by the United States of America. That's what everybody else in the world wants, American citizenship. For some reason, that's repellent to you Canadians. And I find that personally offensive, Premier.

And Doug Ford, to his credit, sat there, didn't take any bait, didn't get overexcited about it, but essentially said Canada's not for sale. Well, first of all, Jesse, you know, I love the US, I love Americans, and I get it. You know, President-elect Trump is a real estate tycoon, he's made billions, but that property's not for sale. We are just like an autonomous, independent country, guys. We're a country, yo! That's basically what Doug Ford had to sit down and say. Well, you know something, Jesse, we're proud Canadians, just like there's proud Americans,

and if we join together and take on the world with a great trade deal between us, I think that'd be fabulous. No one could stop us. Every language is a note in the symphony of our heritage. Together, they create a harmony that cannot be silenced. Discover your voice on the new APTN Languages TV channel. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix.

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financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for money for couples. How do you think people have been reacting here in Canada? Because certainly when Trump started doing this 51st state thing, I think a lot of people kind of treated it like a joke here. I mean, I even did a little bit. There's a sense that after, at least to me, there's a sense that after the press conference, people here are getting kind of pissed off about it now.

Yeah, so it is my understanding, and I get the sense that it makes people uncomfortable, that it's gone from humiliation or joke or whatever, we sort of looked at it as before, as to this thing that won't go away. I was speaking with David McNaughton, who was Justin Trudeau's ambassador to the United States. And he said, you know, my daughter said to me, it's sort of like a dad joke. At first, it's, you know, mildly amusing. But when you keep hearing

it over and over and over again, it's just annoying and not funny at all. But that news conference really seemed to change the tone again, from, you know, this humiliation, this punchline to, again, from, you know, this humiliation, this punchline, to he has some ideas about what he would like to see change, and he's not going to stop this. Yeah, so Trudeau comes out, he says there's, quote, not a snowball's chance in hell that Canada will become part of the United States.

Jagmeet Singh, Elizabeth May say similar things. Pierre Poliev says it will never happen. But we have another issue here, a problem kind of layered on top of this imminent incoming US president problem, which is that we now have a lame duck prime minister. Parliament has been suspended. Many of his top ministers are likely going to be vying for his job in the coming months, and their attention will not squarely be on this.

They are going to be fighting each other to try to be the leader of the Liberal Party. I'm thinking of people like Melanie Jolie, our Foreign Affairs Minister, Francois-Fiordop Champagne. And so I know that you are speaking to many Canadian officials on this file, and how concerned are they about this political moment that we are in, given this real leadership vacuum?

The timing of Justin Trudeau's decision, you know, when you don't... The domestic politics is one thing. Justin Trudeau was in a spot where really, truly the question is, did he have any other option? And that's a question for him to answer. But he made the decision he made given the domestic pressures at home. When it comes to dealing with Canada-US relations at this moment, for the prime minister to announce that he plans to resign two weeks before Donald Trump is coming into office

and threatening to level devastating tariffs on Canada, the timing could not be worse. It's bad. Yeah. So because it basically, it cuts true to at the knees kind of thing. And so it's very clear he no longer has the mandate from Canadian people. He remains the prime minister, but there's going to be a leadership contest. There's obviously going to be an election very soon. That's where the future of the country is going to go. And so Donald Trump is going to be an election very soon. That's where the future of the country is going to go.

And so Donald Trump is going to be dealing with someone different. And so there isn't someone really standing there in the way, in the same way, if it was someone with a fresh mandate or if it was someone who was going into the next election, that kind of thing. Katie, before we go, I do want to talk with you a little bit more about some of the other targets that Trump has in his sight that he talked about a lot during that hour-long press conference. Let's just talk

quickly about the fact that he would not rule out economic or military force, military force, to take Greenland and the Panama Canal. Can you assure the world that as you try to get control of these areas, you are not going to use military or economic coercion? No. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Let's just do Greenland first. Like why is he talking about Greenland?

He sent his son there this week. What's going on? So, the way Donald Trump sort of phrases it, it's a national security threat. Well, we need Greenland for national security purposes. I've been told that for a long time, long before I even ran. I mean, people have been talking about it for a long time. And he is concerned about Chinese and Russian vessels that are sort of in and around that area. You look outside, you have China ships all over the place. You have Russian ships all over the place. We're not letting that happen. And so that's that's really the argument he's presented.

As ice melts there will be better access to northern shipping routes that make shorter journeys between Asia and Europe and given the presence of hostile actors Russia and China that is something he's concerned about. But another major factor could very well be energy, think energy, oil and natural gas and minerals, hugely important rare earth minerals that go into the making of things like electric vehicle batteries. Those are accessible on Greenland and that's something that America wants more of. China really dominates in the production of rare earth minerals. And the US is very interested in finding other opportunities or access points. And this is something that actually involves Canada.

Canada does have rare earth minerals. And we've seen people trying to sort of move forward in terms of extracting those rare earth minerals as a way to deepen and better the relationship with the United States. This is something that's been going on for years now because they see it sort of as a valuable tool to say, hey, United States, you can rely more on Canada,

you can rely more on us if we start getting some of these rare earth minerals out and you don't have to rely on other places to get them. Right, and just worth noting here, Greenland, pretty against this idea of being taken over by the US at the moment. It's a semi-autonomous Danish nation. Denmark is also not too keen on this right now.

Do the Panama Canal for me. Why has that become a target? Well, the Panama Canal connects Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea and then eventually over to the Atlantic Ocean. Really, this is making shipping routes much shorter. Donald Trump has falsely claimed that Chinese soldiers are operating the Panama Canal. Look, the Panama Canal is vital to our country. It's being operated by China. China. It's not true.

The Panamanian president has come out to say, that's just wrong. That's not true. A Hong Kong company does operate the port, and so Donald Trump seems to have, you know, I don't know what, I'm not going to get into Donald Trump's head, but his claim that the Chinese are operating it is not true. The one suggestion I've seen is the reason he is really pushing on this, he's sort of

been fixated on the Panama Canal since about Christmas time, is that perhaps it's a way for the United States to get leveraged to lower the price for passage rates, for shipping rates. So that could be something that Donald Trump is looking for. Because always think why is Donald Trump doing something and what is the point? What is in it for him and what is in it for the United States? Perhaps that's one sort of aspect of that. But again, Donald Trump really seems to be presenting this image of American greatness and expansionism. Yeah. And just no pun intended, expand on that for me a little bit because it strikes

me that taken altogether here, how he's talking about Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal, it does tell you quite a bit about his worldview and his priorities and it really does embody this whole America first thing, right? This idea that you use your immense strength to pursue your narrow national interests, even if it means coercing smaller countries and allies to do it. He clearly is thinking about his legacy. That is one thing that stands out to me. This is his second term.

He can't run for office again unless there are some significant changes in America and we are in a weird new time. So who knows? Who's to say? Who's to say? So he's clearly thinking about his legacy and he has this vision of this new golden age of America and it includes expansionism. One thing that stands out is that he, the way he's talking about it and that he won't rule out using military

force to sort of get his way when it comes to Greenland and when it comes to the Panama Canal. He's talking in a similar fashion to those strongman leaders that he so admires that he speaks glowingly about when it comes to sort of expansion. And one thing that I was talking with an expert about this, who said to me, you know, when Trump stands up there and says things like, you know, this invisible border with Canada, expect those strongman leaders to echo him as well. So can you imagine Vladimir Putin standing up there and using that kind of language to talk about the border with Ukraine? So when Donald Trump, who is about to become the most powerful leader in the free world, when he gets up

and stands up and says that kind of thing, it in a way gives permission for other leaders to get up and, you know, says that kind of thing, it in a way gives permission for other leaders to get up and use that kind of language too. Donald Trump clearly has a vision for what he wants to see for America and he also wants to make changes to make America more wealthy and that is his purview and that is what American voters sent him to office to do. And so whether this is any sort of real path to expansionism or it's a negotiating tactic to try to extract things out of, whether it's Greenland, whether it's Panama Canal,

whether it's Canada, that this is all a very different time in Washington, D.C. Okay. Katie Simpson, thank you very much. Thanks. All right, that's all for today. I'm Jamie Puehse. Thanks so much for listening to Front Burner. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.