It has been a few years since my last trip to the Florida panhandle, where our family had a vacation home on St. George Island. It offered many incredible charms, including houses with views of both the Gulf ofMexico and Apalachicola Bay. On the other end of the longtime North American Free Trade Zone, I love the views along the Canadian border, across the Great Lakes, or the incredible sights of NiagaraFalls.Toronto is one of my favorite places to visit and travel to on the planet.It seems like just yesterday our closest neighbors and allies were much like extended family.At present, however, those warm relations, at least between nations and governments, are quite a bit frostier.
In their first faceto- face meeting at the White House last week, new Canadian Prime MinisterMark Carney reportedly said to President Donald Trump, “Having met with the owners of Canada ... it’s not for sale and it won’t be for sale, ever.”
President Trump tends to use a negotiating tactic called “anchoring.”Enter into contract negotiations; declare you will only be satisfied by receiving the universe and at least one sun to fully meet your needs; repeat declaration at every opportunity; stun your negotiating partners and potential partners with the boldness of the ask; continue this posture for a period of time. The ploy expects the negotiating partner will eventually come forward, assuming there are mutual needs for a deal to take place, and says, “How about we give you a planet?”
Border communities and paired cities such as Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario; Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia; Niagara Falls, New York and Niagara Falls, Ontario; or even the town of Beebe Plain, straddling the international border between Vermont and Quebec; know all too well how closely intertwined the two peoples, regions, and economies are.
Canada has a population exceeding 41 million in 10 provinces and three far north territories.Latitudinally, the bulk of Canada’s populationlives south of Seattle and clustered within 100 miles or so of the U.S. border, along the Great Lakes and North American waterways and canals that form much of the physical divide.
Thanks in part to the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a trade treaty and act of Congress, Canada and Mexico — by a healthy measure — are our largest trade partners. Canada purchased $356.5 billion of American goods and exports in 2022, accounting for 17 percent of total U.S. exports.Mexico was a close second that same year at $324.3 billion, with China a very distant third at $150.4 billion.Only one European nation made the top five, with the United Kingdom at $76.2 billion, and the U.S. has atrade surplus with Great Britain, meaning they are one of the few trade partners who buy more U.S. goods than we purchase from them.
Alaska and Hawaii were originally both territories of the United States.Today, the U.S. has governing, national defense, and funding/ trade alliances in place with 14 U.S. territories and nation-states, including Puerto Rico (where residents are also U.S. citizens), American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Missouri entered the U.S. as a territory (the Missouri Compromise), and Texas entered the union as a commonwealth.As a U.S. commonwealth, Canada could maintain its complete independence and sovereignty, trade borders and tariffs could be eliminated, with national defense and energy/rare earth minerals agreements updated and finalized.
Having Canada become a state is fraughtwith logistical and legal challenges, well beyond opposition in The Great White North, however.Canada would overnight become first over California in terms of state population. That new state would enter the Electoral College as well as have two U.S.
Senators and a Congressional delegation roughly equivalent in size to California (52 U.S. House members).And while the Canadian Maple leaf and flag are red and white, the population and politics of the majority of Canadian provinces and particularly the three which have 86% of Canada’s population (Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia) are most decidedly blue.
Adding the state of Canada would almost overnight shift control of the U.S. Congress to the Democratic Party, likely within two election cycles, and with California and Canada then controlling potentially 108 Electoral College votes, a path to victory and the White House would easily be within reach every four years, with nearly 25-30 percent of the expanded nation’s population concentrated within those two states.
As this president claims expertise around “the art of the deal,” perhaps he should also bone up on the law of unintended consequences, eh?
