Donald Trump suggested “maybe Canada should become the 51st state” when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told him his proposed tariffs would “𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 the Canadian economy,” Fox News reports citing unnamed sources.
Trudeau met Trump at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last week, after Trump threatened a 25 percent tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico unless the countries reduce migrants and drugs coming into the U.S.
The U.S. is Canada’s biggest trading partner by a distance, accounting for approximately 75 percent of Canada’s exports. The countries currently trade under a largely duty-free deal, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which was signed into law by Trump and took effect in 2020.
Fox News’ White House correspondent Peter Doocy told Special Report host Bret Baier on Monday evening: “We are told that when Trudeau told President-elect Trump that new tariffs would 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 the Canadian economy, Trump joked to him that if Canada can’t survive without ripping off the U.S. the tune of one hundred billion dollars a year, then maybe Canada should become the 51st state and Trudeau could become its governor.”
We has contacted Trump’s transition team and Trudeau’s office for comment via email.
Trudeau’s trip to Mar-a-Lago made him the first G7 leader to visit Trump since the November 5 U.S. presidential election.
On Saturday, Trump called the talks “very productive” and said the men discussed topics including fentanyl, illegal immigration, and trade.
Trudeau told reporters it had been an “excellent conversation,” later writing on X, formerly Twitter: “Thanks for dinner last night, President Trump. I look forward to the work we can do together, again.”
U.S. Senator-elect Dave McCormick, who won a tightly fought race in Pennsylvania, on Saturday shared a picture of himself sitting at a table with Trump and Trudeau at the Mar-a-Lago meeting.
Also at the table were Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, who Trump has picked to lead the Interior Department, and Mike Waltz, who Trump has tapped for national security adviser.
Canadian Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, and Katie Telford, Trudeau’s chief of staff, were also seen sat around the table.
Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo has also said she and Trump held positive phone talks on Wednesday, before Trudeau visited Mar-a-Lago.
“There will not be a potential tariff war,” Sheinbaum Pardo told reporters during a press conference last Thursday. The U.S. accounts for about 83 percent of exports from Mexico in 2023.
But Sheinbaum Pardo and Trump gave different accounts of their conversation.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said it had been a “wonderful conversation” and Sheinbaum Pardo agreed to “stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.”
Sheinbaum Pardo in a statement shortly afterwards said: “We reaffirm that Mexico’s stance is not to close borders but to build bridges between governments and peoples,” she said.
U.S. President Joe Biden, who will be replaced in the White House by Trump on January 20, criticized the tariff plans while speaking to reporters in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on Thanksgiving.
“I hope he rethinks it, and I think it’s a counterproductive thing to do,” Biden said in response to a reporter’s question. “The last thing we need to do is begin to screw up those relationships.”
Trump has also threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs on the nine nations that form the BRICS trade coalition—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates—if they create a rival currency to the U.S. dollar.
China has rebuked the threat from Trump. “The U.S. has long used its dollar hegemony to shift crises, spread U.S. inflation to other parts of the world, and made it become a geopolitical tool, which damages international economic and financial stability, and disrupts international order,” Liu Pengyu, spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in the U.S., told mnews on Monday.