Donald Trump says jump, Canada’s corporate elite ask how high 

Donald J. Trump is not a subtle politician. But he does know how to smell weakness. And right now, Canada’s entire political and economic establishment reeks of it. 

Two weeks ago, the present-elect issued a threat on social media to Canada and Mexico, calling on both countries to beef up border security or else face 25% tariffs on all exports to the United States. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded by flying down to Mar-a-Lago to beg Trump to reconsider. 

Meanwhile, Pierre Poilievre, along with much of the business elite and several premiers, urged Trudeau to do anything and everything necessary to appease the orange menace to the south, effectively siding with Trump. 

The humiliation did not end there.  

At the dinner, Trump suggested Canada could become the 51^st state, if the country’s economy can’t handle the impact of across-the-board tariffs on Canadian goods. Trump and his advisors laughed in Trudeau’s face and mused about making him governor following Canada’s annexation, according to media reports.  

Trump has since repeated his “joke” on social media, referring to Prime Minister Trudeau as the “Governor” of the “Great State of Canada” and posting an AI-generated image of himself standing on a mountaintop next to a Canadian flag. In an interview with NBC News, Trump claimed the U.S. was “subsidizing Canada to the tune of over $100 billion a year,” in a confused reference to the trade deficit between the two countries. “If we’re going to subsidize them, let them become a state.”  

It is always hard to know what to take seriously and what to ignore when it comes to the U.S. president-elect. But a few things are clear. 

By any honest measure, Canada-U.S. relations have reached a new low. “Not since the late 1800s – when a couple presidents who followed Lincoln threatened to annex Canada – has our country been treated with such continued disdain and disrespect by a U.S. president,” Lawrence Martin wrote in the Globe & Mail – and that was before Trump’s comments about annexation came to light.  

Trump’s noxious brand of xenophobic, anti-immigrant politics is spilling over the border, amplifying an already-existing trend. Flows of fentanyl from Canada to the U.S. are virtually non-existent, and people coming from Canada make up less than 0.6% of those seeking asylum in the U.S. Despite the glaring absence of any factual basis for Trump’s grievances, Trudeau has vowed to deploy more “muscular” border control measures to the non-existent “crisis” at the Canada-U.S. border, while Poilievre and several premiers have urged a wider crackdown on immigrants.  

Trudeau, Poilievre, and the premiers have all cynically chosen to use Trump’s tariff threats to reinforce the narrative that immigrants are to blame for all our problems. But make no mistake: the militarization of our border and the scapegoating of immigrants will not make housing more affordable, nor will it bring down the price of groceries or ensure that our hospitals are better staffed. The politicians pushing this narrative are simply deflecting blame from themselves and letting their political masters – the corporations and the 1% – off the hook. 

Concessions now will only beget more concessions down the road. NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) was supposed to protect us from this kind of unilateral economic bullying. Clearly, the Trudeau government has no confidence that the agreement does any such thing, despite its recent updating in 2020 as CUSMA (Canada-US-Mexico Agreement). Even before landing in Florida, Prime Minister Trudeau had already pledged to deploy more helicopters, drones, and border patrol officers to address the non-existent issues at the border raised by Trump, at an estimated cost of $1 billion.  

In response, Trump quickly shifted the goalposts. Media reports indicate that while Trudeau and Trump spent most of their three hours together discussing the tariff threat, border security and Canada’s trade balance with the U.S., Trump also brought up defence spending and pipelines to the U.S. – including the cancelled Keystone XL pipeline – during the hastily-arranged meeting.  

What’s next? Bulk water exports from B.C. to quench severe droughts in the Western U.S., as Trump suggested on the campaign trail? Scrapping supply management protections for our dairy farmers? Rolling back the Digital Services Tax on U.S. internet giants like Amazon and Netflix?  

Whatever Trump asks for next, one thing is clear: Corporate Canada is ready to give it to him. Corporate lobbyists have already drawn up a list of pre-emptive concessions to be made to stave off Trump’s wrath – calling for ratcheting up military spending by an additional $18 billion per year, slashing corporate taxes, and other pro-business give-aways.  

With CUSMA up for review in July 2026, we can expect Trump to be angling for even more – and our corporate class pressuring the federal government to give in to him. 

Canada’s corporate elite is letting Trump win – we need a new path 

Liberals have tried to laugh off Trump’s comments about annexing Canada as a “light-hearted” joke (Minister Dominic Leblanc) or a harmless dig meant to “rattle Canadian cages” (former Trudeau advisor Gerald Butts). But it is hard not to feel rattled by the servile reaction of our so-called political leaders and business elites to Trump’s opening gambit. 

The Council of Canadians was founded in 1985 to warn about the consequences of rushing headlong into economic integration with the U.S., and the severe limitations it would impose on our  democracy.   

It’s time we reconsider the wisdom of hitching the future of our country to what is clearly an empire in decline, slouching towards authoritarianism and ruin. 

We are living through a new gilded age, one of deepening ecological, social and geopolitical crises. Our democratic processes have been hollowed out and people’s rights usurped by increasingly unaccountable corporations and opaque international agreements. 

Our political and media elites can’t imagine a different world.  

But if we are to face the overlapping crises roiling our world and our country, we need to chart a radically different path, one rooted in values of peace, cooperation and solidarity. We can’t do that if our leaders act like we already are an appendage of our neighbours to the south. 

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