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OTTAWA-After President-elect Trump mused about using “economic force” to acquire Canada as the 51st state during his Mar-a-Lago news conference on Tuesday, outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded on social media that “there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.”
However, as Trudeau announced on Monday his plan to resign as prime minister once the Liberal Party that he leads chooses his successor, the biggest pushback to Trump’s pitch to annex Canada – and his planned 25% tariffs on exports from the country – has come from the premier of Canada’s most populous province, Ontario.
Doug Ford, a former businessman and conservative who has served as Ontario’s 26th premier since 2018, told Fox News Digital in an interview that the president-elect’s targeting Canada is both “crazy” and “ridiculous.”
He said the bilateral focus should be on “strengthening” what the Canadian government calls a nearly trillion-dollar two-way trade relationship to “make the U.S. and Canada the richest and most prosperous jurisdiction in the world.”
At a Toronto news conference on Monday following Trudeau’s resignation announcement, Ford chided Trump with a “counteroffer” to his Canada-as-a-51st state idea. “How about if we buy Alaska and throw in 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 remarks that he should have chosen “somewhere warmer, like Florida or California.” “California never votes for him anyway,” he added.
Ontario’s premier is also taking Trump’s tariff threat seriously. Last month, his Progressive Conservative government launched a multimillion-dollar U.S. ad campaign on television and streaming apps touting Ontario as an “ally” to generate “more workers, more trade, more prosperity, more security.”
“You can rely on Ontario for energy to power your growing economy, and for the critical minerals crucial to new technologies,” says the 60-second ad.
President-elect Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau talk prior to a NATO meeting in Watford, Hertfordshire, England, Dec. 4, 2019. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)
Ford said the 25% tariff against Canada, which Trump plans to implement on his first day in office on Jan. 20, would hurt millions of American and Canadian workers.
Nine million Americans produce products for Ontario alone every single day, he said. “The problem is China shipping goods into Mexico and Mexico slapping a made-in-Mexico sticker.”
JUSTIN TRUDEAU’S RESIGNATION MET WITH GLEEFUL REACTION FROM CONSERVATIVES ONLINE: ‘THE WINNING CONTINUES!’ Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are heading the Department of Government Efficiency. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Ontario is ready to take retaliatory measures “that will really send a message to the U.S.” in response to the imposition of U.S. tariffs, said Ford, who was involved in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement during the first Trump administration, but would now like Canada to have separate deals with the U.S. and Mexico.
“It’s unfortunate because retaliation is not good for either country,” he offered, noting that Ontario is the top exporter to 17 states and the second largest to 11 others.
“The last thing I want to do is hurt those people,” said Ford. “I want to create more jobs in the U.S., more jobs in Canada. And we can do that by making sure that we toughen up and put tariffs on places like China.”
By way of example, he said that “someone in Texas who purchased a GM pickup truck made in Oshawa, [Ontario] might have paid between $50,000 and $60,000,” and with a tariff, “would be paying 70 some-odd thousand.” “It just doesn’t make sense whatsoever,” Ford said.
Tractor trailers drive across the Ambassador Bridge border crossing from Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit, Michigan, on Feb. 14, 2022. (Geoff Robins/AFP via Getty Images)
