Eight years ago, President Donald Trump spoke about the U.S.-Canada relationship in glowing terms.
He hosted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House in February 2017 for one of his first joint appearances alongside a foreign leader. Trump opened by noting the nations “share much more than a border,” highlighting “the special bonds that come when two nations have shed their blood together — which we have.”
“America is deeply fortunate to have a neighbor like Canada,” Trump said. “We have before us the opportunity to build even more bridges, and bridges of cooperation and bridges of commerce.”
Fast-forward to Thursday, weeks after Trump initiated a full-scale trade war with Canada, and it’s clear the president doesn’t believe the U.S. should share a border — or much else — with its Canadian neighbors.
Speaking with reporters in the Oval Office, Trump first mentioned his love for Canadians, including his “many friends” like hockey legend Wayne Gretzky. Then he riffed about how Canada shouldn’t exist as a sovereign country before getting to what has increasingly become a fixation: wholesale annexation of Canada as a U.S. state.
“Canada only works as a state,” Trump said Thursday. “We don’t need anything they have. As a state, it would be one of the great states anywhere. This would be the most incredible country, visually. If you look at a map, they drew an artificial line right through it, between Canada and the U.S. Just a straight, artificial line. Somebody did it a long time ago, many many decades ago. Makes no sense. It’s so perfect as a great and cherished state.”
“But why should we subsidize another country for $200 billion?” Trump continued, adding, “And again, we don’t need their lumber, we don’t need their energy. We have more than they do. We don’t need anything. We don’t need their cars. I’d much rather make the cars here. And there’s not a thing that we need. Now, there will be a little disruption, but it won’t be very long. But they need us. We really don’t need them. And we have to do this. I’m sorry.”
Trump has been unapologetic in his quest to conquer the Canadians — an effort he said in January would be conducted by “economic force.” The result has been a disintegration of the relationship between the U.S. and one of its closest allies, and a stock market plunge over fears of ever-increasing escalation of a trade war. Both Canadian officials and Republicans initially thought the president was merely joking, ribbing Trudeau — a longtime foil — after they met at Mar-a-Lago in November. It was after that visit that Trump first publicly floated the notion of absorbing Canada. Few think he’s joking now, and the Canadians have stopped laughing.
A source with direct knowledge of the discussions told NBC News that Trump is heavily focused on Canada in conversations with aides, who believe he is completely serious about making the country the 51st state — even with Trudeau out of power and a new prime minister in place.
‘No clue where that is coming from’
There isn’t exactly a groundswell of support for the idea. At a heated town hall in his district on Thursday, Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., was pointedly asked whether he supported Trump’s push to annex Canada and Greenland.
“No,” Edwards said. “I do not.”
While Canadians said Trump did privately joke to Trudeau about Canada becoming a state during the president’s first term, several officials who worked in Trump’s White House said the broad assault on Canadian sovereignty was not born out of any conversations at the time. In fact, these former officials said they have no recollection of Trump ever raising the issue.
“Never, ever heard him mention it,” one former White House official said. “Ever. No clue where that is coming from.”
Congressional Republicans similarly did not recall such an idea being discussed in his first term.
“That’s probably three nos,” Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., said when asked if he recalled Trump expressing interest in acquiring Canada, redrawing borders or renegotiating treaties with the Canadians. “No. At least in my recollection, this is all kind of new territory.”
A 68-page national security report Trump signed in December 2017 included only one mention of America’s northern neighbor: “Canada and the United States share a unique strategic and defense partnership.”
In private, Trump has made specific demands the Canadians say they could never agree to. The president made clear in a phone call with Trudeau last month that he wants to revise the boundary between the two nations set by a 1908 border treaty, as two Canadian officials said and was previously reported by The New York Times and Toronto Star.
If Trump truly objects to the boundary line, the proper forum to resolve the dispute is the International Court of Justice, a Canadian official said.
The president has also mentioned renegotiating agreements that dictate how the Great Lakes and Columbia River are governed, the official told NBC News, adding that Trump wants to control the Northwest Passage, a maritime path that begins west of Greenland and cuts through Northern Canada to the Arctic Ocean.
“He wants our water,” the Canadian official added. “He wants to take the water.”
Marc Miller, the Canadian minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, said that for Trump, Canada’s allure is its natural resources. The president separately wants American access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals as compensation for the aid given to the war-torn country.
“I do think that Mr. Trump looks at our natural resources and has that acquisitive mind behind it,” Miller said, calling Trump’s claims of the U.S. subsidizing Canada for $200 billion misleading.
Miller said Canadians started truly taking Trump’s threats of annexation seriously after his inauguration. He voiced disappointment that more allies have not spoken up in Canada’s defense.
“I can’t say this was totally predicted. Nor can anyone,” Miller said. “Frustratingly among our allies, everyone is ducking for cover.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
A battle to be treated ‘fairly’
In recent weeks, Trump has enacted wide-ranging and steep tariffs on a litany of Canadian goods. There have been some walkbacks. And then there has been escalation. Canada has instituted retaliatory measures. And the tit-for-tat trade war has intensified on a near daily basis.
Canada is one of the U.S.’s largest trading partners, with nearly 80% of Canadian exports marked for the U.S. The country provides about 60% of U.S. crude oil imports, 85% of electricity imports and is also the biggest exporter of steel and aluminum into the U.S.
“Well, I think Canada is a neighbor,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a Tuesday briefing. “They are a partner. They have always been an ally. Perhaps they are becoming a competitor now.”
Trump hasn’t provided Canada with an obvious off-ramp for the tensions, either. He has objected to what he describes as steep Canadian tariffs on dairy imports from the U.S. and highlighted the importance of U.S. metals production. But he has also said a lead reason for the trade war is Canada’s lack of urgency in dealing with the fentanyl crisis — even though just 43 pounds of fentanyl were seized by U.S. border agents entering the country from Canada during the last fiscal year, compared to 21,100 pounds coming from Mexico. And he has wrongly claimed American banks are not allowed to do business north of the border; the Canadian Banking Association said last month that 16 U.S. banks currently operate in Canada.
“Clearly, the president is looking for some results,” said Amodei, who launched the bipartisan American Canadian Economy and Security Caucus in 2023 and reintroduced a House resolution affirming the U.S.-Canada partnership last month. “I’m not sure those results are clearly defined.”
Amodei said Trump is above all looking for the U.S. to be “treated fairly” on trade, as Trump has pointed to examples where he believes Canada is not doing so.
“When you say, well, you want to be treated fairly, the question is, OK, define fairly.” Amodei said. “And I don’t think ‘fairly’ is defined at the moment.”
Canadians view Trump’s push to expand the U.S. into Canadian territory as beyond unfair. Mark Carney, the former Canadian and British central banker who was sworn in as prime minister on Friday, described “dark days” ahead for his nation after being elected to lead the Liberal Party.
“These are dark days — dark days brought on by a country we can no longer trust,” he said. “We are getting over the shock — but let us never forget the lessons. We have to look after ourselves and we have to look out for each other.”
He has since said he is ready to negotiate a renewed trade deal — Trump already renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement into the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement during his first term — so long as his nation’s sovereignty is respected.
“If he wanted Canada — if he really wanted it — he’s harmed the prospects of Canada being the 51st state by the way he’s approached it,” said John Bolton, a national security adviser during Trump’s first term who has since broken with him.
‘Canada is a sovereign state’
Trump’s rhetoric is not necessarily being matched by other members of his administration. During a confirmation hearing on Thursday, Trump’s pick to serve as ambassador to Canada, former Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., said “Canada is a sovereign state,” suggesting that the president’s push for annexation was due to his relationship with Trudeau.
Asked by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., how he can heal a “negative relationship that has developed because of the president’s statements,” while “addressing tariff issues,” Hoekstra responded: “Obviously, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about that myself.”
Nearly 800 miles north of Washington, D.C., at a meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Quebec, reporters pressed Secretary of State Marco Rubio about Trump’s push to make Canada the 51st state. Rubio said there would be no such conversation at the G7 gathering.
“It is not a meeting about how we’re going to take over Canada,” Rubio said.
A senior State Department official described “a need to separate out trade policy” from “broader cooperation on foreign affairs, and that’s challenging.”
“But there is broad agreement that we cannot allow real disagreements on certain issues to prevent us from working together on areas of agreement, especially critical foreign policy issues including migration, China, and of course Russia and Ukraine,” this person added.
What also confounds Republicans about Trump’s idea is that annexing Canada would potentially add millions more Democrats to American voter rolls. Canada is a liberal-leaning nation with a population larger than California. Were Canada to become a state, it could mean 50 more House seats and two additional senators — auguring a real power shift in government.
“They’d have a sizable delegation in the House,” Amodei said. “”I don’t think anybody thinks that’s a great idea. Oh, by the way, how many Electoral College votes are they going to get?”
Trump’s history of managing the U.S.-Canada relationship is intertwined with his own personal relationship with Trudeau who, up until this week, has been his only Canadian counterpart. At times, their relationship has been fruitful, like when they reworked the trade agreement governing commerce between their nations. But there has been animosity, too.
Now, annexation threats have ignited a “wave of patriotism in Canada” unlike any Miller has seen.
“Not hiding the fact that it can do a lot more damage to Canada than the U.S.,” Miller said, noting the U.S. is Canada’s top trading partner. “But we have a high pain threshold and we’re ready to fight.”
There’s a reason Canada believes it can win the fight, too. Its citizenry is united against relinquishing its national sovereignty, while the U.S. is divided over Trump’s trade war — especially as the stock market slides.
“Trump’s position is vulnerable because he doesn’t have the support of the American business community,” the Canadian official said. “And we know that.”
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