Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he jokingly suggested a trade for Vermont or California in response to President-elect Donald Trump’s signaling an interest in annexing Canada.
Trudeau recounted the exchange, which he said Trump “immediately” decided was no longer funny, when he was asked in an MSNBC interview whether Trump had previously discussed annexation with him.
“It actually sort of came up at one point, and then we started musing back and forth about this,” Trudeau told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki about his visit with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November. “And when I started to suggest, ‘Well, maybe there could be a trade for Vermont or California for certain parts,’ he immediately decided that it was not that funny anymore, and we moved on to a different conversation.”
The full interview is set to air on “Inside with Jen Psaki” at 12 p.m. ET Sunday.
Trudeau has repeatedly rejected Trump’s musings about Canada’s becoming the 51st state, writing Tuesday on X, “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.”
A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Trudeau had made the trip to meet with Trump shortly after Trump threatened to impose a 25% tariff on Canadian goods.
Trump in November called his meeting with Trudeau at his club in Palm Beach, Florida, “very productive,” saying they had discussed immigration and “the massive Trade Deficit the U.S. has with Canada.”
Trudeau said in the MSNBC interview that Canada is prepared to deliver a “robust response” if Trump goes forward with his tariff plan.
“My focus has to be not on something that he’s talking about that will not ever happen but more on something that might well happen: that if he does choose to go forward with tariffs that raise the cost of just about everything for American citizens, that on top of that, we’re going to have to have a robust response to that,” Trudeau told Psaki.
Trump has said imposing blanket 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, a proposal he has framed as a response to the ongoing fentanyl crisis, would be among his first executive orders when he begins his second term this month.
Trudeau said this week that he would step down as the head of Canada’s ruling Liberal Party amid intensifying calls for his resignation partly because of how he has handled threats from Trump. The abrupt resignation last month of Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who cited concerns over using “costly political gimmicks” instead of battling the incoming tariff threat squarely, signaled Liberal Party dissatisfaction with Trudeau’s approach.
