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Trump cares about the stock market. To truly rebalance American trade Trump would have to swallow a reversal of a decade of trillions of dollars of foreign inflows into US capital markets and a huge crash. He can’t and won’t.
In the meantime, why not play along? Trudeau or whoever is Canadian PM should go to Washington and tell Trump they’re very interested in the joining the USA, but the people aren’t all for it, it will take time to clear some internal hurdles, and while he tries to sell it to Canada he needs some tariff relief for goodwill purposes.
By the way, this is one of Trump’s plays I actually support. Canada should be annexed by the US. The completion of Manifest Destiny would be an extraordinary achievement, and any Anglo-Canadian identity that stood out from American identity has, as our dear friend Kulak has chronicled, vanished almost entirely. There is nothing left; might as well join the US.
This will surprise you as much as I imagine it will surprise Trump, but Canadians are, in fact, proud of their identity. ("Proud? Of being Canadian?" "Yes, Mr President, I know it sounds strange but I assure you it is true")
Why would Canadians want to join the USA? To be beholden to a constitution to which they have no fondness, to a federal government to which they feel no fealty? Have you seen the polls on this question? Additionally, if Canada did somehow join the USA, they would not be state 51, but rather states 51-60. That plus 40 million new left-leaning citizens would probably mean Democrats sweeping the elections for a generation.
It would be disastrous for the GOP, although things will even out faster than a lot of people think. But it would be a grand achievement nonetheless, something genuinely impressive.
If it could be achieved with a minimum of bloodshed and the broad assent of the Canadian people then yes, I agree. But this is impossible. And achieving it any other way would be the beginning of the end for American geopolitical dominance.
You're saying alienating all of their allies, making it supremely clear that they cannot be counted on to fulfill their treaty obligations, and probably tanking their defence industry wasn't?
What treaty obligations have gone unfulfilled? Or do you just mean that US allies believe that it has some kind of implicit treaty to give Ukraine military aid?
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