Trudeau says no chance Canada joins U.S. as Trump threatens ‘economic force’
globalnews.caPrime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday there “isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States” after U.S. president-elect Donald Trump threatened to compel a merger through “economic force.”
Trump, in a wide-ranging press conference from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida with less than two weeks before he takes office, said “we don’t need anything” that Canada trades with the U.S., again repeating comments about making Canada a U.S. state.
The statement by Trudeau, who announced Monday he will resign as prime minister after a new Liberal leader is chosen, marks his strongest pushback yet against Trump, who has repeatedly called Trudeau a “governor.”
Trump’s remarks Tuesday, meanwhile, were the latest of his recent threats against longstanding U.S. allies, renewing questions and concerns about plans to use trade as a cudgel, and went beyond similar comments he has made about making Canada a part of the U.S.
Trump told reporters he wouldn’t rule out using military action to take back control of the Panama Canal and acquire Danish-controlled Greenland, which he said the U.S. needs for economic and security reasons.
Asked if he was considering the same to “annex and acquire Canada,” Trump responded, “No — economic force.”
“Canada and the United States, that would really be something,” he said. “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.”
“There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States,” Trudeau later wrote on X.
“Workers and communities in both our countries benefit from being each other’s biggest trading and security partner,” he added.
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