During his November visit to Mar-a-Lago in Florida, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he and President-elect Trump briefly discussed his remarks about making the neighboring country the “51st state”.
“It actually sort of came up at one point, and then we started musing back and forth about this,” Trudeau told Jen Psaki in a preview clip of a longer interview that will air on MSNBC Sunday.
“And when I started to suggest, well, maybe there could be a trade for Vermont or California for certain parts, he immediately decided that it was not that funny anymore, and we moved on to a different conversation.”
Trump has repeatedly criticized Trudeau, who announced this week that he will resign as Prime Minister of Canada, over a US-Canada merger.
It has been interpreted in part as an attempt by Trump to secure a better economic deal with Canada, as the president-elect warns of new tariffs on Canadian exports.
Trudeau stated that Trump’s tariffs on Canadian exports would necessitate a “robust response.”
“This isn’t out of the blue that he’s doing this, but my focus has to be not on something that he’s talking about that will not ever happen, but more on something that might well happen — that if he does choose to go forward with tariffs that raise the cost of just about everything for American citizens, that on top of that, we’re going to have to have a robust response to that,” said Trudeau.
Aside from talking about making Canada the 51st state, Trump has also mentioned buying Greenland and reclaiming the Panama Canal.
During a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, Trump did not rule out using military force to take Greenland or the Panama Canal.
“You might have to do something. “The Panama Canal is critical to our country,” he told reporters at the resort in Palm Beach, Florida. “We need Greenland for national security purposes.”
