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President Donald Trump is continuing to suggest that Canada could divest itself of its own sovereignty and join the United States as the 51st American state over the continued objections of Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney.
Carney, whose Liberal Party cruised to a victory over the rival Conservatives in last month’s parliamentary elections in part thanks to widespread disgust at Trump’s suggestion that Canada could be annexed, as well as the trade war the U.S. president started against the longtime American ally, visited the Oval Office on Tuesday for his first-ever meeting with his U.S. counterpart.
Speaking in the Oval Office alongside Trump, he called the American leader “transformational” and praised his “relentless focus on the American worker” and efforts at “securing your borders … ending the scourge of fentanyl and other opioids and and securing the world.”
But when Trump was pressed on whether he still would like Canada to become part of the U.S., he refused to drop the line.
“I do feel it’s much better for Canada, but we’re not going to be discussing that unless somebody wants to discuss it,” he said.
Trump added that Canada becoming part of the United States “would really be a wonderful marriage.”
Carney, responding to Trump invoking his own background as a real estate developer while discussing why he would like to erase the longstanding U.S.-Canada border, told him that “there are some places that are not for sale” and said Canada remains one of those places.
“Having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign over the last several months, it’s not for sale. It won’t be for sale ever, but the opportunity is in the partnership and what we can build together,” he said.
Carney added that Trump had played a role in having “revitalized NATO” and pushing his country to “playing our full weight” in the 32-member bloc, at which point the American leader acknowledged that Ottawa had been “stepping up the military participation” by spending enough on defense as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product and called the increased spending “a very important thing.”
But Trump refused to concede Carney’s point on his country not being up for sale, adding: “But never say never.”
Carney, sitting silently as the American president spoke, mouthed the word “never” to the television cameras trained on him.
The sit-down between the Canadian head of government and the American head of state comes after a whirlwind first 100 days of Trump’s second administration, during which he has inflamed once-cordial relations between the longtime allies by imposing successive waves of tariffs on Canadian goods and making a show of disrespect for Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau.
Trump took to calling the former Liberal Party leader “governor” as if he were already the head of an American state shortly after he won the 2024 presidential election and began proposing that Canada become the 51 state as a way of avoiding the tariffs he has touted as a solution for everything from trade imbalances to fentanyl trafficking across the largely unguarded frontier between the two countries.
Trudeau, in an effort to be conciliatory, rushed to the president’s Florida home to meet with him shortly after the election in hopes of quelling the discontent, but to no avail. Instead, he and his party grew more and more unpopular as Trump’s attacks on him increased.
But Trudeau, who had spent nearly a decade in office, upended the table by announcing his resignation shortly before Trump was inaugurated. Carney was chosen as his successor pending last month’s parliamentary elections, and the prospect of new leadership — combined with a rally-around-the-flag effect in response to Trump’s annexation talk and trade wars — caused the Liberal Party to reverse months of dismal polling and retain control of government in Ottawa.
And even though the trade war he started has spooked financial markets and caused confidence in the U.S. to sink in an incredibly short period of time, Trump looks to be sticking to his guns on the value of taxing his own people.
He said Carney’s refusal to consider surrendering his country’s sovereignty would not be a hindrance to trade talks as he inexplicably claimed that other governments would pay tariffs — which are taxes borne by American importers and passed on to consumers as higher prices — as a price paid to access American markets.
“For the most part, we’re just going to put down a number and say, This is what you’re going to pay to shop. And it’s going to be a very fair number. It’ll be a low number. We’re not looking to hurt countries. We want to help countries. We want to be friendly with countries … We’re going to say, in some cases, we want you to open up your country. In some cases we want you to drop your tariffs,” he said.
“So we’re going to put down some numbers, and we’re going to say our country is open for business, and they’re going to come in and they’re going to pay for the privilege of being able to shop in the United States of America. It’s very simple.”
The Canadian leader’s visit to the White House evoked for some observers the possibility of a blow-up along the lines of what had happened earlier this year when Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky sat down with Trump and left following an Oval Office shouting match with Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
But nothing of the sort transpired.
In a press conference at the Canadian embassy following the bilateral talks, Carney thanked Trump and his team for welcoming him to the White House for what he described as “very constructive discussions.”
“I conveyed to the President today what our countries have long proven to be true, that Canada and the United States are stronger when we work together. We can get a better deal for our workers. We can create more opportunities for our businesses. We can build stronger economies across North America when we work together,” he said.
“And really, today marked the end of the beginning of a process of the United States and Canada redefining that relationship of working together. The question is: How we will cooperate in the future, how we can build an economic and security relationship built on mutual respect, built on common interests, and that delivers transformational benefits to our economies?”
Carney said the talks between him and Trump had been “wide-ranging” and stressed that they would continue when he hosts Trump and the other Group of Seven heads of government for their annual summit in Kananaskis, Alberta next month.
