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"Oh the Urbanity" a Canadian YouTuber just put out a video titled "Donald Trump is 100% serious about annexing Canada" where I think he puts forward a really convincing argument for the title argument, and for why it needs to be taken seriously.
I won't force you to watch the video but here it is, I'll give you his 13 points for it and explain them.
1: "Repeated preoccupation"
This isn't just a "one off brain fart" like a lot of Trump's rhetoric, he's been consistent about it over and over again. From Trump himself "So when I say they should be a state, I mean that, I really mean that"
2: "Aides say he's serious."
Includes a tweet from White House Deputy Chief of Staff to take him at face value and sources to CNN reporting other aides say similar, take his claims seriously.
3: "Canada says he's serious"
Some of the politicians in Canada believe that Trump is very serious about this threat too.
4: "Questioned our border"
He's talked about believing the Canadian/US border to be illegitimate (Something he also points out is that Trump has not done the same with Mexico) and that this is the rhetoric used before trying to take over another country.
5: "Loves big real estate deals."
Trump is narcissistic and loves to put his names on things and claim big accomplishments. "Is there any bigger real estate deal than doubling the land mass of the USA?"
6: "Fits into his world view"
Urbanity believes Trump has a view of great powers dominating over their local spheres of influence
7: "Threatened other countries"
He's talked about this with other countries like Panama and Greenland, showing the expansionist mindset. Along with the reported plans being developed for a potential Panama invasion.
8: "Consider his influences"
People that Trump likes are Pat Buchanan (who has talked about taking Canada and Greenland before) and McKinley (Trump's favorite president) who annexed multiple territories.
9: "Admires Vladimir Putin"
Trump has shown a lot of respect to Putin before and often victim blames Ukraine for being invaded.
10: "Pretexts like Drug Cartels"
They're trying to claim that Canada has been taken over by drug cartels and they need to wage a war to take it back from harming the country. It sounds like the Bush administration talking about WMDs.
11: "Spins Canada as abuser"
They talk about things like Doug Ford putting a tax on electricity exports as an "act of war" by Canada, and treat retaliatory tariffs as unprovoked aggression.
12: "Information Bubble"
Trump lives in an information bubble where the main sources he listens to are the ones that feed from him like Fox News. His ideas about Canada wanting to be taken over from Fox News talking about "Maple MAGA" likely reinforce his desire even more.
13: "No Personal Morals"
Urbanity views Trump as a man who has scammed people before with various business projects, shitcoins and the like. There's little reason to expect he wouldn't disregard the sovereignty of other nations.
While he doesn't mention this, I personally think another major point to consider is that Trump is not consistent on what he wants from Canada. One day he says it's the trade deficit, next day he says its drugs, then the next day its immigrants, the next day he says nothing can be done at all and he just wants the state. It sounds like excuses just being made up based off how he feels that day.
Urbanity goes on to argue that even if the threat isn't likely, it is no reason to take it as less serious. The main thing being that Trump is enacting a trade war, which is still causing serious harm to the Canadian economy and their people.
Like if a mafiaso moved in next door and started joking about killing you. Even if the chance was low, it's understandable to take their words seriously. "Threats don't have to be higher than a 50% chance to take them seriously"
He draws a corollary to Ukraine where there was a lot of disbelief and doubt about Russia invading in 2022, until as we're all aware, it happened. "But they did it"
All in all I think this is very convincing that Trump really does want to annex Canada and that we as a society should be taking that possibility seriously. And as Urbanity also points out, even if it's unpopular now, Trump's followers and the Republican party have been shown to be rather flexible at following his lead against their prior beliefs. They might be against him in 2025, but what about 2026 or 2027 when they've had years of Fox News and Trump speeches repeating the stories of Canadian Cartels and "Acts of War"?
So for discussion, there's a few questions.
Do you think Trump has serious intentions to annex Canada? Is it right of him or wrong of him to do this? If he does ramp up rhetoric (or efforts) to annex or invade, would you wish for the Republicans to oppose him or continue to support him as duly elected president? And how likely is it that Trump will transform from his rhetoric to serious action (beyond the trade wars)?
After checking the transcript with a ctrl+f "arctic" . . .
. . . #14: oh and not for nothing but if the Transpolar Sea Route opens Canada will gain the second most geostrategically significant coastline on the planet.
You can't have a discussion about the US acquiring Greenland or Canadian territory without including the arctic opening to shipping. If it should come to pass that freighters can easily cross the arctic, it will be the most impactful event for trade since the Panama Canal.
I assess Trump higher than most so I wouldn't be surprised if this is a tertiary motivator for his wanting Greenland after resource wealth and Monroe Doctrine. I don't know how to place his posturing on Canada, but that's because I don't believe Canada in its current form will exist by 2100. As discontent with their governance rises, so does the probability of a serious secessionist movement. If Alberta votes to secede, they will be backed by the full weight of the American establishment, up to declaring war if necessary. It's too much land, money, and power. If one leads to another, if Saskatchewan and Manitoba want to join, if Quebec also secedes, then suddenly we might have two or three highly developed nations to our north. Smaller states, more dependent on the US, more money. Imagine Vancouver becoming a city-state, we'd pour money in, we'd guarantee their sovereignty. We get the right leader in and in a few decades maybe we have the American Singapore. Meanwhile, with Alberta and/or Saskatchewan and/or Manitoba in the union, we'll have borders carved on one side to the shores of the Northwest Territories and on the other to the shores of Hudson Bay.
Regardless of what is actually going on in Trump's mind with Greenland and Canada, serious actors have understood the significance of the TSR for a long time. Greenland, regardless of the ice melting, will be part of the US soon enough. Canada depends on too much to say with certainty, other than the certainty of the US supporting any border province that votes to secede.
It's worth noting that the polls (that show Upper and Lower Canada once again uniting to fuck up the rest of the country) show the West voting even harder for their regional interest party. Once the Alberta metro areas start seriously considering this, and extended trade war applied in sufficient quantities (on the Canadian side- tariffs are federal, and the LPC and its voters will gladly burn the nation down this way for ego reasons) will accomplish this, it's over.
The best ending for us at this point is that the West leaves Canada for good, and becomes part of a full free-trade economic union with the United States but still a nation in its own right. I don't think the Alberta public will accept outright joining the Union as a new State, at least at first; actually, I don't think BC, SK, or MB will either. This is for the same reason that some US territories outright reject Statehood. Ottawa and Toronto will be able to apply more pressure on the parts of Ontario that are not them so it'll take them longer and Atlantic Canada is utterly dependent on government handouts for survival so they'll never leave willingly. There are far more entrenched economic interests in the East compared to the West, and the ones that do exist out West are more heavily enmeshed with American interests.
And then there's the matter of who they'd be voting for in US elections with full Statehood, and the fact that being under American dominion means American institutions, and American institutions means American grievances, and American grievances are wrong and bad (witness how much damage they have done to the whole of Canada already!) so if we can limit the damage they do that's good.
The ultimate problem for AB right now is that it's landlocked, so it needs to be able to cut a path to the sea to sell its wares (the closest warm-water port is Kitimat and it would become a nation away should it leave the Dominion). Having no border between it and the states to its immediate South will help with this, but it'll still be at a disadvantage.
Vancouver will only become a city state should the rest of the province seek a divorce. This isn't a hypothetical when you look at the election map: the current government has literally zero seats outside the GVRD and Island yet the interest party for those areas forms a majority government. Clear evidence of irreconcilable differences, much like the West is to (Upper and Lower) Canada as a whole.
Again, there are certain trade levers that can be pulled to make that happen; the US dropping its softwood import tariff conditional upon desired political realignment and ensuring northern reserves of natural gas are legal to extract would be one of them.
Fossil fuel extraction pushes local politics towards the GOP in the US. There are few irreconcilable political differences between the parties but fossil fuels is the biggest.
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