Canadians and Republicans alike are confounded as President Donald Trump increasingly links a trade war to his push to annex America's northern neighbor.

Summary

Donald Trump’s push to annex Canada as the 51st U.S. state is confusing due to its sudden and unexplained emergence.

Initially praising Canada as an ally, Trump now aggressively seeks annexation, imposing tariffs, criticizing trade deficits, and challenging established borders and treaties.

Former officials and congressional Republicans express bewilderment, stating they have “no clue” about Trump’s motivation.

Canadian leaders and the U.S. business community strongly oppose the move, citing sovereignty and economic harm.

Republicans also question Trump’s strategy, noting annexation would add millions of liberal-leaning voters and complicate American politics.

  • thefluffiest@feddit.nl
    34·
    2 days ago

    This is his (stupid and selfdefeating) way to tackle four problems:

    1. US industry, especially those close to him, needs rare earth minerals. Canada and especially Greenland might provide those.
    2. Climate change will render large parts of the US uninhabitable in a few decades time. The US therefore needs Lebensraum. Now that’s a word he and his right-arm-raising friends love.
    3. Combining 2 and 1, the Arctic is melting. Exposing all sorts of new mineable goodies, and opening up new waterways. That will provide new economic opportunities as well as create new military threats. Owning Canada and Greenland would go a long way towards mitigating that.
    4. Trump sees a future in which a few large power blocks control the world. Currently, the US is one of the smallest of those: only 350 million where China and India are over 1 billion each, Europe is more than 500 million, etc. So the US needs to expand and grow its population size.
    • NotLemming@lemm.eeEnglish
      26·
      2 days ago

      He’s much too stupid for any of this, so I assume we’re talking about the architects of project 2025 and/or putin?

      • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        141·
        2 days ago

        100%. T rump is just a tool that they put in place to do their bidding and to be a fall guy when the people finally get off their asses.

        • NotLemming@lemm.eeEnglish
          4·
          2 days ago

          I think that’s why they have musk around. Not only is he doing a lot of the controversial stuff but he’s loaded

      • thefluffiest@feddit.nl
        4·
        2 days ago

        Point 1 will be underscored regularly by his oligarch cronies, like Musk, Bezos and Brin - those that want to build rockets, electronics and batteries. They would love for the US to become totally independent of China, in minerals but also production capacity and price levels.

        Point 3 will be mostly military talking points, and although it’s not in the media much, the race for the Arctic has been on for a while.

        Points 2 and 4 are about raw power on the world stage, and that’s something Trump does understand. He doesn’t believe in cultural, diplomatic or economic power - only military. It also rhymes with nazi ideology about Lebensraum, a homeland for the ‘pure race’ that derives its global power from its purity. It might also involve a breeding ideology.

      • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
        7·
        2 days ago

        Yes, because they want “the right population.” Fascist ideals are often contradictory and self-defeating. The Nazis could have had atomic weapons if they hadn’t treated Jews as subhuman; that would have been a big help in their plans for world domination.

        Their plan for solving their shrinking population is simple though; force everyone to have more babies. Remove all access to abortion, remove all access to contraception, destroy same sex marriage, destroy the ability for women to get divorced, destroy any form of social support that could help women who leave their partners, and offer incentives to families who have more children. Oh, and if course remove all child labour laws so families can afford to have more kids by sending them all off to jobs at Amazon when they’re 12.

        (There are concrete examples of Republicans pushing every single one of those policies, in case you weren’t aware)

        Basically, if you see women as nothing more than baby factories who don’t deserve anything frivolous like rights, population growth seems like an easy problem to solve.