As if he wasn't busy enough planning a second administration and quieting rumors that Elon Musk is pulling the strings, President-elect Donald Trump has suggested that the United States take over Canada. Within an hour of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation announcement, Donald Trump reiterated his pitch that Canada should join the United States. “If Canada merged with the U.S. there would be no Tariffs, taxes would go way down, and they would be totally secure…What a great nation we would be,” he wrote in a Truth Social post on Monday. The following day at a press conference, he stated that he will use “economic force” to encourage Canadians to abandon the “artificially drawn” border with the U.S.
There’s a long history of U.S. leaders jockeying for control of their larger northern neighbor. Both the American Revolutionary War and War of 1812 featured U.S. ambitions for Canadian annexation. Such talk rose again following the Civil War five decades later—a threat so grave that it motivated Canada’s political leadership to incorporate as a new country, rather than a British colony, to control their own destiny and tell the Yanks “no thanks.”
