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OTTAWA-After President-elect Trump mulled the use of “economic force” to acquire Canada as the 51st state during his press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, Canada’s outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded on social media that ” “There is not the slightest possibility of Canada becoming part of the United States.”
However, as Trudeau announced on Monday his plan to resign as prime minister once the Liberal Party he leads elects his successor, the biggest pushback against Trump’s talk of annexing Canada – and his plans for 25% tariffs on country’s exports – has come from the premier of Canada’s most populous province, Ontario.
Doug Ford, a former businessman and Trump-like conservative who has been Ontario’s 26th premier since 2018, told Fox News Digital in an interview that the president-elect’s targeting of Canada is both “crazy” and “ridiculous”.
He said the bilateral focus should be on “strengthening” what the Canadian government calls a quasi- trillion dollars two-way trade relationship to “make the United States and Canada the richest and most prosperous jurisdiction in the world.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks to the media as he arrives for a meeting in Ottawa, Canada, on February 7, 2023. (James Park/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
At a news conference in Toronto on Monday following the announcement of Trudeau’s resignation, Ford rebuked Trump with a “counteroffer” to his idea of Canada as a 51st state.
“How about we buy Alaska and add Minnesota?” the premier said at Queen’s Park, Ontario’s legislature.
Ford jokingly told Fox News Digital that he heard from Canadians after making those comments that he should have chosen “somewhere warmer, like Florida or California.”
“California never votes for him anyway,” he added.
At his Monday news conference, Ontario’s premier said that “on my watch” the annexation of Canada “will never, ever happen.”
Ford is also taking Trump’s tariff threat seriously.
President-elect Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau talk before a NATO meeting in Watford, Hertfordshire, England, on December 4, 2019. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)
Last month, his Progressive Conservative government launched a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign in the United States on television and streaming apps touting Ontario as an “ally” to deliver “more workers, more commerce, more prosperity, more security.”
“You can rely on Ontario for the energy that will power its growing economy and the critical minerals crucial for new technologies,” the 60-second ad says.
Ford said that 25% tariff against Canadawhich Trump plans to implement on his first day in office on January 20, would harm millions of American and Canadian workers.
“Nine million Americans produce products just for Ontario every day,” he said. “The problem is that China sends goods to Mexico and Mexico puts a made-in-Mexico label.”
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy head the Department of Government Efficiency. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Ontario is ready to take retaliatory measures “that will really send a message to the United States” in response to the imposition of U.S. tariffs, said Ford, who was involved in renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement during the first Trump administration. but Now he would like Canada to have separate agreements with the United States and Mexico.
“It’s unfortunate because retaliation is not good for either country,” he said, noting that Ontario is the top exporter to 17 states and second to 11 other states.
“The last thing I want to do is hurt those people,” Ford said. “I want to create more jobs in America, more jobs in Canada. And we can do that by making sure we get tougher and put tariffs on places like China.”
As an example, he said that “someone in Texas buying a GM truck made in Oshawa, Ontario, could have paid between $50,000 and $60,000,” and with a tariff, “they would be paying $70-something thousand.”
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Ford said.
Tractor trailers cross the Ambassador Bridge border crossing from Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit, Michigan, on February 14, 2022. (Geoff Robins/AFP via Getty Images)
He would like to have a face-to-face meeting with Trump and said he has reached out to U.S. senators and governors to make that happen. A meeting with SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whom Trump named to co-lead, with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, the proposed “Department of Government Efficiency” is also on Ford’s wish list.
Ford said Trump “doesn’t realize” that Ontario is the United States’ third-largest trading partner, worth about $344 billion in 2023, “evenly divided down the middle.”
Ontario’s premier said he wants to send more electricity and critical minerals to the United States, which “needs us like we need them.”
TRUMP REACTS TO TRUDEAU’S RESIGNATION: ‘MANY PEOPLE IN CANADA LOVE BEING THE 51ST STATE’
In 2012, the prime minister and his late brother, Rob, who was mayor of Toronto at the time, met with Trump, along with his daughter Ivanka, when they were in town to open the now-no longer former Trump International Hotel and Tower. affiliated with The Trump Organization and known as The St. Regis Toronto.
Ford, who ran a Toronto-based family business, Deco Labels & Flexible Packaging, before entering municipal politics as a councilor in 2010, calls Trump “a shrewd operator” and “a smart businessman.”
The incoming president “knows Ontario,” the premier said.
“No senator, no governor, no congressman or businessman has said that Canada is a problem,” said Ford, who opened a Deco branch in Chicago in 1999.
He said Trump has not set his sights on others United States allies such as the United Kingdom and France, but “wants to target” the United States’ “closest friend”: Canada.
“I’m not really sure if it’s something personal against Trudeau, but Trudeau is on his way out, so I hope we have a better conversation,” said the Ontario premier, who added that he would consider running in federal politics in the future. .
On Monday, Trump posted Social Truth that “the United States can no longer suffer the huge trade deficits and subsidies that Canada needs to stay afloat.”
Doug Ford campaigns at Cambrian College in Sudbury, northern Ontario, on April 11, 2018. (Steve Russell/Toronto Star)
“Justin Trudeau knows it and he resigned,” said the next president of the United States, the 47th.
But Trudeau remains prime minister, and Ford and the premiers of the other nine provinces and three territories will meet with him next Wednesday in Ottawa to address the issue of Trump’s tariffs.
Despite his departure as prime minister sometime in the next two months, when the next Liberal leader is expected to be chosen, Trudeau should not think that he is “blameless” and that Canadian prime ministers will “stand firm” to ensure Canada is ready to respond to the Trump administration’s impending punitive trade measure, Ford said.
He chairs the Federation Council, a meeting of Canada’s prime ministers, which has taken into account Canada-U.S. relations and made it possible to avoid U.S. tariffs. “a priority” according to a statement issued last month.
“Canada and the United States form one of the largest integrated markets in the world, with more than 3.5 billion Canadian dollars (about 2.4 billion U.S. dollars) in goods and services crossing the border each day. The United States sells more goods and services to Canada that sells to China, Japan and Germany together.”
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To help calm Trump’s concerns about border securityThe Ford government launched “Operation Deterrence” on Tuesday to combat illegal crossings, drugs and weapons, 90 per cent of which enter Ontario from the United States, the premier told Fox News Digital.
Regarding drugs, he said his government is also collaborating with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to identify the source of the fentanyl ingredients and whether they originated in “China, Mexico or the United States.” “.
Last month, the Trudeau government announced its own border security plan.
