Category: Comment O’ The Day

“So your country can’t survive unless it’s ripping off the U.S. to the tune of $100 billion?”

Trudeau Tells Trump Canada Wouldn’t Survive His Tariff, and Trump’s Response Is Priceless.

Canada’s vapid and callow Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made an emergency trip to Mar-a-Lago Friday to see the president-elect. Trudeau was thoroughly alarmed over Trump’s threat to impose a 25% tariff on Canada (as well as Mexico) if they don’t do anything to stop the flow of illegal migrants and drugs into the United States. Trudeau was clearly hoping to talk some socialist internationalist sense into Bad Orange Man, but instead, the vacant-faced Canadian authoritarian got a response that was pure Trump, and revealed once again how deeply Trump holds his America-First principles.

Fox News reported Monday that Trump has called his meeting with the vacuous and childlike Canadian leader “very productive,” but apparently not in the way that Canada’s most prominent Swiftie had hoped it would be. The atmosphere was convivial, with the two men “nibbling on crab cocktail and slurping down oysters” as they discussed “the issues of tariffs, border security and trade deficits.” Yet for all the superficial chumminess of the affair, Trump remained focused on what he wanted from Canada: “While cordial and welcoming,” he was “very direct when it came to what he wants from his counterpart to the North.”

Trump reportedly told Trudeau that “Canada has failed the U.S. border by allowing large amounts of drugs and people across the border, including illegal immigrants from over 70 different countries.” The once-and-future president “became more animated when it came to the U.S. trade deficit with Canada, which he estimated to be more than $100 billion,” and told his shallow Canadian counterpart that “if Canada cannot fix the border issues and trade deficit, he will levy a 25% tariff on all Canadian goods on day one when he returns to office.”

That was when Trudeau started whining and claiming victimhood status. After all, what else would you expect a leftist to do? Trudeau knows that playing the victim is the pathway to fame, favor, and fortune on the left, and apparently, he assumed this to be a universal tendency. So he told Trump, probably with tears glistening in eyes, that he just couldn’t impose such a tariff “because it would kill the Canadian economy completely.” There is nothing in the available reports about Trudeau offering to do anything about stopping the flow of migrants and drugs over the border. He just wanted Trump to withdraw his threat for nothing, out of his concern for the well-being of Canada.

Trudeau doesn’t seem to have realized, however, the implications of the fact that Trump is not a fellow socialist internationalist. It isn’t that he doesn’t care about Canadians; it’s that as president of the United States, he will act in the best interests of Americans. It’s actually Trudeau’s job, not Trump’s, to act in the best interests of Canadians.

And so the America-First president-elect asked Trudeau, “So your country can’t survive unless it’s ripping off the U.S. to the tune of $100 billion?” Driving his point home, Trump “suggested to Trudeau that Canada become the 51st state, which caused the prime minister and others to laugh nervously.” Displaying his never-failing sense of humor, Trump then told Trudeau “that prime minister is a better title, though he could still be governor of the 51st state.” Someone at the meeting, according to Fox News, then warned Trump that as a state, Canada would be deep blue, whereupon Trump suggested it become two states, a leftist one and a patriotic one.

Fox noted that “while sources say the exchange got many laughs, Trump delivered the message that he expected change by January 20.” Trudeau went away knowing very well that Trump means business and isn’t going to play the same game that he would have played with Obama or Biden. Neither of them would have threatened tariffs over the flow of illegal migrants and drugs into the United States in the first place, and if they did offer any criticism of Canadian policy at all, it would have been toothless rhetoric that would have been forgotten as soon as the meeting was over.

Trump, by contrast, is making it clear that he is very serious about tackling the problems that beset his nation, and doing everything he can to solve them. That there are so many Americans, as well as Canadians and others, who strenuously oppose his efforts to do so is an indication of how severe those problems really are.