When U.S. President Donald Trump first suggested Canada should become the 51st American state, the federal government dismissed it as just a joke. Finance Minister Dominic Leblanc insisted it was “in no way a serious comment.”
Similar skepticism was expressed by political leaders across the world when Trump talked about seizing Greenland and the Panama Canal in early January, by military force if necessary, to buttress U.S. national security. He also floated the idea of taking over Gaza to transform it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Now that Trump has carried through on his aggressive economic threats — launching a trade war with China and raising the possibility of similar conflicts with Canada, Mexico and the European Union — his imperialist expansionism is in plain sight.
