U.S. President Donald Trump has rolled out tariffs and import bans against Canada in quick succession and has repeatedly claimed he would incorporate it as "America's 51st state," prompting assessments that the two countries' relationship has entered its worst crisis in recent memory.
The United States and Canada have clashed repeatedly over the past 100-plus years over trade, borders and nuclear deployments. But recently, Trump has even questioned Canada's sovereignty, changing the nature of the conflict, The New York Times (NYT) noted.
The latest dispute began with trade. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, in response to U.S. tariff impositions, levied retaliatory tariffs on about $20 billion worth of U.S. imports. Trump immediately banned imports of Canadian-made motorcycles, alcoholic beverages, dairy products and some molasses, ratcheting up the pressure.
Trump has publicly mocked the Canadian government and military. As he began his second term, he also repeated his claim that he would incorporate Canadian territory as America's 51st state. Recently, he posted on the social media site Truth Social an image of himself in hockey gear standing over a fallen Prime Minister Carney.
Robert Boswell, an emeritus professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto who studies U.S.-Canada relations, said, "I think it is virtually impossible to find a time when relations were worse than they are now," adding, "No U.S. president has ever said that annexing Canada was the goal."
◇ U.S. drafted plan to invade Canada in the 1920s to prepare for war with Britain
U.S. wariness of Canada dates back a century. According to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, the U.S. military began formulating the "War Plan Red" in 1927 to prepare for war with Britain and completed it in 1930.
At the time, the United States and Britain were competing over naval power and overseas markets. The U.S. military anticipated that if war broke out, Britain would use ports and railways in Canada, a Commonwealth country, to send troops and supplies to North America. It thus conceived a plan to attack Canada early in the conflict to block Britain's entry route into North America.
However, War Plan Red was not a policy the U.S. government devised to actually pursue an invasion of Canada. It was a contingency plan drafted by the military to prepare for the unlikely event of a U.S.-British war, and it is known that neither the president nor Congress approved its execution or examined it seriously.
Canada also drew up "Defense Plan No. 1" in 1921. If a U.S. invasion were imminent, Canadian forces would cross the border first to raid strategic points in the northern United States and then withdraw while destroying bridges and railways. It was not a plan to occupy the United States but an idea to buy time until Britain and Commonwealth reinforcements arrived.
◇ In the 1970s, they clashed over the "Nixon shock"… Trump rekindles distrust
The two countries clashed again in 1971 over economic issues. The United States at the time was suffering from a balance of payments deficit and a falling dollar. President Richard Nixon, to defend the dollar, halted the exchange of gold for dollars and imposed a 10% surcharge tariff on all imports in what became known as the "Nixon shock."
Canada, whose industrial and trade structures were tightly intertwined with those of the United States, requested a tariff exemption but was denied. With its high dependence on the U.S., Canada's economy inevitably suffered a bigger blow than other countries.
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau warned that if the tariffs continued, U.S. corporations operating in Canada could move their production facilities back to the United States and demanded their withdrawal. Differences over the value of the Canadian dollar and the countries' trade barriers added to the dispute, which escalated into a personal spat between leaders.
That December, after meeting Trudeau at the White House, Nixon disparaged him in private as a "pompous intellectual" and a "son of a bitch." Trudeau later retorted, "I've heard worse from better people."
The NYT analyzed that Trump has revived Canada's long-standing distrust and anxiety that it could be absorbed by the United States.
In Canada, the 1995 film "Canadian Bacon" is also getting renewed attention. The plot centers on a U.S. president with falling approval ratings stoking anti-Canada sentiment to divert attention from domestic problems, prompting reactions that it may have foretold the current situation.
Christopher Sands, director of the Center for Canadian Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said, "Trump has provoked Canadians' nationalism," adding, "As long as Carney resists, it is politically advantageous to him."
He added, "Canadians were truly shocked by this episode," and said that to repair relations, "the United States will have to win back the hearts of the Canadian people, and that will take quite a long time."