Less than two months ago, it was a joke. Toward the end of a conversation with two Canadian ministers visiting Washington, I raised an idea floated in an Economist op-ed that had caused a bit of a stir. It argued, in somewhat tongue-in-cheek fashion, that Canada should join the European Union. I asked François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s minister for innovation, science and industry, and Defense Minister Bill Blair if, rather than becoming the 51st state as President Donald Trump had urged, Canada should be the 28th member of the European Union. The two politicians chuckled, but demurred. They were on a mission at the time to persuade the newly installed Trump administration of the essential bond between the United States and its neighbor to the north. Canada was the U.S.’s closest partner, they urged, bound together by geography, shared histories and intertwined supply chains. Still, Champagne pointed to the sprawling free-trade pact between Ottawa and Brussels, an understanding that arguably makes Canada “the most European country outside of Europe.” It was a gentle reminder that Canada had other options and partnerships, too.  |  | |
The intervening weeks have yielded a remarkable rupture in U.S.-Canada ties. The entreaties of Ottawa fell on deaf ears in Washington, and Trump has relentlessly — and quixotically — banged the drum of annexation, casting U.S. imports of Canadian goods as an unnecessary “subsidy,” scoffing at the “artificial” border between the countries and insisting that Canada would be better off as the next state in the union. Confusing and infuriating allies, Trump has threatened, imposed and, in some instances, drawn back punitive tariffs on Canadian goods, provoking reluctant retaliatory measures from his northern neighbor. At a meeting of Group of Seven foreign ministers this week, Canadian foreign minister Mélanie Joly warned the rest of the world: “If the U.S. can do this to us, their closest friend, then nobody is safe.” She also said there was no justification for Trump’s attacks on Canada’s identity and economy. “The Americans want our resources, our water, our land, our country,” Mark Carney, the Liberal Party leader poised to become Canada’s prime minister on Friday, said last weekend. “Think about it. If they succeed, they will destroy our way of life.”  | | |
Not surprisingly, Canadians are warming to the idea of strengthening ties with Europe. A recent poll even found that a plurality of Canadians would support joining the European Union — reviled by U.S. right-wingers for its rules and regulations — if Ottawa had the option of entering the bloc. The idea isn’t so far-fetched. As Blair, the defense minister, reminded me, Canada and Europe technically share a land border (albeit, in an uninhabited Arctic island that’s adjacent to Greenland, which is administered by Denmark). Some analysts believe that what constitutes a European nation isn’t so cut-and-dry, though the bloc rejected Morocco’s bid for entry decades ago because it was not a “European state.” Canadian and European officials routinely hail the “shared values” that link them across the Atlantic. That has certainly been the case in recent weeks, as Trump has opened trade wars with both Canada and Europe. On Thursday, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock and the E.U.’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, posed in red and white and sent a message of solidarity to Joly, saying Europe had Canada’s back. Earlier in the week, Paula Pinho, a spokesperson for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, welcomed the news of Canadian public support for accession. “We are honored with the results of such a poll,” Pinho told reporters in Brussels. “It shows the attractiveness of the European Union, and it shows the appreciation of a very large share of Canadian citizens for the E.U. and its values.” Both Canada and the European Union have hit back at the United States with retaliatory tariffs. Their statements announcing the measures echo a shared regret and dismay with their treatment by Washington. And developments point to the need for closer collaboration. “Ottawa must prepare for a world where Washington is less reliable,” Teona Lavrelashvili, a visiting fellow at the Martens Centre, an E.U. think tank in Brussels, told CBC. “Strengthening engagement with Europe … is not just strategic, but essential.” Trump, meanwhile, keeps launching more rhetorical broadsides, in addition to further tariff threats. In a social media post Thursday threatening new tariffs on European alcohol, he said the European Union was “formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States.” Later in the day, as he sat next to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the White House, Trump renewed his calls for U.S. absorption of Greenland. He mocked Danish rights to the territory — “a boat landed there 200 years ago or something?” he scoffed — and suggested darkly in front of the NATO chief that he would rather “drag NATO” into the tussle over U.S. claims. Greenlanders, who held their own parliamentary elections this week, are in favor of independence from Denmark but don’t want to join the United States. “The U.S. president has once again aired the thought of annexing us,” Mute Egede, Greenland’s outgoing prime minister, said in a Facebook post. “Enough is enough.” Diplomats elsewhere are still grappling with the effects of Trump’s wrecking-ball approach to diplomacy and the global economy. The U.S. stock market has tanked in recent days, while fears of a recession have gained ground. Trump’s belief in the power of tariffs seems deeply held — along with his anger over deficits with trading partners — but analysts doubt their efficacy in the current moment. “Tariffs can be used to achieve some national targets, but they are rarely the best instrument to achieve them. Even when they work, they are often inefficient and cause considerable collateral damage,” wrote economists Chad Bown and Douglas Irwin in Foreign Affairs. “The foreign retaliation they invite can reverse any initial benefits they might yield. And economists are particularly skeptical about using tariffs to achieve multiple objectives at once, as Trump apparently wants to do.” In an interview with Australian television, Kevin Rudd, Canberra’s envoy in Washington, laid out the difficulty he and his colleagues were experiencing in getting the Trump administration to exempt Australia from tariffs on its steel and aluminum exports to the United States. He said the current White House represents a sweeping departure from the past — even from Trump’s own first term. “We’re up against a deep, ideological, strategic view of this Trump administration,” he said. “These are deep-seated, fundamental changes in this different America, which every one of the 36 countries who negotiated tariff exemptions on steel and aluminum last time round, back in 2017, have had to contend with this time round.” |
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