Yuri Kobzar17:17, 07.03.25

There is not much time left before demands for “denazification” of Canada.

US President Donald Trump wants to revise the century-old agreement on the demarcation of the US-Canada border. In Ottawa, they believe that Trump is not joking when he talks about wanting to annex Canada, writes The New York Times .

After Trump imposed 25 percent tariffs on Canadian goods on Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took an unusually tough tack, including denying the president’s assertion that tariffs on Canadian imports would somehow protect the United States from smuggling the drug fentanyl from Canada.

“The justification … is absolutely false, absolutely baseless, absolutely untrue. He wants to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy because that will make annexation easier,” Trudeau said.

The NYT considers this a sign that Trudeau no longer considers Trump’s statements about the “governor of Canada” and the “51st state” of the United States to be just bad jokes. And the journalists’ own sources told what exactly prompted the Canadian prime minister to take the words of the US president seriously.

The two leaders held several phone calls throughout February to discuss bilateral trade. The specific details of those conversations were not publicly disclosed, but people familiar with the talks told the Times that they discussed more than just tariffs.

During the calls, Trump laid out a long list of grievances against Canada’s economic policies, but he also touched on a much more fundamental issue. He told Trudeau that he did not believe in the validity of the 1908 treaty demarcating the border between the two countries and that he wanted to renegotiate the border, the sources said.

Trump also demanded a review of the rules for the shared use of border lakes and rivers between the two nations, which is regulated by a number of bilateral treaties.

“Canadian officials took Mr. Trump’s comments seriously, not least because he has already said publicly that he wants to bring Canada to its knees. (…) [Canadian] officials do not see the Trump administration’s threats as empty; they see a new normal when it comes to the United States,” the NYT writes.

Deterioration of US-Canada relations: Latest news

As UNIAN reported, earlier this week the US imposed a 25% tariff on imports of goods from Canada. In response, Canada announced mirror tariffs on American goods. After that, Trump threatened to raise tariffs on Canadian goods by another 25% .

We also reported that Canada is afraid of repeating the experience of Ukraine, which Trump deprived of military aid. In particular, Canadian experts are concerned that, on Trump’s orders, Lockheed Martin can remotely “turn off” the Canadian Air Force’s electronically-packed F-35 fighters .

(C)UNIAN 2025