Fox News reported that Trump made the comment in response to Trudeau expressing concern that Trump’s threats of tariffs against Canada would damage the Canadian economy.
Public Safety Secretary Dominic LeBlanc, who attended a dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club on Friday, said Trump’s comments were a joke.
“The president told jokes. The president was making fun of us. It was, of course, in that regard, not a serious comment by any means,” LeBlanc told reporters in Ottawa.
LeBlanc described it as a three-hour social evening at the president’s residence in Florida over the American Thanksgiving long weekend. “The conversation was supposed to be light-hearted,” he said.
He called the relations warm and cordial and said that the fact that “the president knows how to joke with us like that” speaks of good relations.
On Tuesday, Trump appeared to continue the prank, posting on his Truth Social platform an AI-generated image of him standing on a mountain with a Canadian flag next to him with the caption “Oh Canada!”
Gerald Butts, Trudeau’s former top adviser and close friend, said Trump has done this before.
“Trump frequently used the ’51st State’ line with Trudeau during his first term,” Butts wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “When someone tries to make you go crazy, don’t. #protip”
Earlier last week, Republican Pres threatened to impose 25% tax on all products entry into the USA from Canada and Mexico unless they stop the flow of migrants and drugs.
Trudeau requested a meeting in an attempt to avoid tariffs by persuading Trump that the northern border nothing like the US southern border with Mexico.
On Tuesday, Trudeau held a rare meeting with opposition leaders on U.S.-Canada relations and later said he was the leader of the opposition Conservatives Pierre Poilievre it should not reinforce the wrong stories Americans are telling about the border.
“Less than one percent of migrants who come to the United States illegally come from Canada, and 0.2 percent of the fentanyl that comes to the United States comes from Canada,” Trudeau said in parliament.
Canadian officials said there are plans to deploy more helicopters, drones and police officers at the border.
At the dinner, Kristen Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the US, said that America’s trade deficit with Canada has also increased. Hillman said the U.S. had a $75 billion trade deficit with Canada last year, but noted that a third of what Canada sells to the U.S. is energy exports, and prices have been high.
“Trade balances are something he focuses on so it’s important to engage in that conversation but put it in context,” Hillman told The Associated Press. “We are one-tenth the size of the United States, so a balanced trade agreement would mean that per capita we buy 10 times more from the US than they buy from us. If that’s his metric, we’ll certainly be looking at it.”
Hillman said that Canada sold $170 billion worth of energy products to the US last year
About 60% of US crude oil imports come from Canada, as well as 85% of US electricity imports.
Canada is also the largest foreign supplier of steel, aluminum and uranium to the US and has 34 critical minerals and metals that the Pentagon wants and invests in for national security.
About 77% of Canadian exports go to the US
The Trudeau government successfully applied a “Team Canada” approach during Trump’s first term when a free trade agreement between Canada, the US and Mexico was renegotiated. But Trudeau’s minority government is now in a much weaker position politically and faces an election in a year.
Poilievre, the Canadian opposition leader, said the tariffs would hurt Americans.
“The president-elect was elected on the promise to make America richer. These tariffs would make America poorer.” Poilievre he said after meeting with Trudeau.
Poilievre said the US would be wise to trade more freely with its best friend and closest ally.
Canada is the main export destination for 36 US states. Almost C$3.6 billion ($2.7 billion) worth of goods and services cross the border every day.
Trudeau returned home after dinner at the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida without persuasion Trump would drop the threatened tariffs on all products of America’s main trading partner. Trump called the talks “productive” but signaled he wasn’t backing down on a pledge Canada says unfairly puts it on par with Mexico over the flow of drugs and migrants to the United States.
Migrant flows and drug seizures are very different. US customs officials seized 43 pounds of fentanyl at the Canadian border last fiscal year, compared to 21,100 pounds at the Mexican border.
Most of the fentanyl that reaches the US – where it causes about 70,000 overdose deaths annually – is made by Mexican drug cartels using precursor chemicals smuggled from Asia.
On the immigration front, the U.S. Border Patrol reported 1.53 million encounters with irregular migrants at the southwest border with Mexico between October 2023 and September 2024. That compares to 23,721 encounters at the Canadian border during that time.
