Opinion | Canada, May I Introduce You to Ukraine?

I had a conversation last week with a Canadian journalist about the culture war on American campuses.After we finished talking about that, she had one final question for me.“What the hell is Trump thinking about Canada?”She wasn’t just asking about President Trump’s tariff threats.

She was also asking about Trump’s obsession with referring to Canada as the 51st state.The tariffs were somewhat understandable, even if terribly misguided.

They are, after all, one of Trump’s few consistent policy obsessions.He likes tariffs perhaps even more than he likes walls.But if anyone thinks that Trump is merely trolling or joking with his constant references to Canada as the 51st state, I refer you to my newsroom colleague Matina Stevis-Gridneff’s report that Trump told the former prime minister of Canada Justin Trudeau “that he did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between the two countries was valid and that he wants to revise the boundary.”Trudeau told Canadians that Trump wanted “to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that’ll make it easier to annex us.” The president’s statement is not one a world leader lightly makes, even if that world leader is named Donald Trump.And why wouldn’t Canadians be alarmed? Trump has been quite clear with his intentions and his reasoning.Let me quote Trump’s recent conversation with Laura Ingraham, a Fox News host.“Here’s my problem with Canada,” Trump told Ingraham.

“Canada was meant to be the 51st state, because we subsidized Canada by $200 billion a year.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....