Trump’s False Claims about Canada Spark Numerous Questions

On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump backed down from a trade war escalation that had threatened a massive surge in tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum and new tariffs on Canadian electricity. In turn, Ontario paused surcharges on electricity to U.S. customers.

The developments Tuesday marked a slight de-escalation in a trade war between the U.S. and Canada after the U.S. imposed 25% tariffs on imports from Canada. In a near-immediate response, Canada slapped a 25% retaliatory tariff on $30 billion worth of goods. 

The tit-for-tat measures between the U.S. and Canada reignited a trade war that had been averted a month earlier, when Trump paused the implementation of tariffs after reaching an agreement with Canada on border enforcement. Trudeau sharply criticized the tariffs, calling them a "dumb" policy that does not “make sense.”

Artificially Drawn Line: The Border and Trump’s Plan for Canada

After President Trump imposed tariffs on Canada on Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made an extraordinary statement that was largely lost in the fray of the moment.

“The excuse that he’s giving for these tariffs today of fentanyl is completely bogus, completely unjustified, completely false,” Trudeau told the news media in Ottawa.

“What he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that’ll make it easier to annex us,” he added

Canadian officials took Trump’s comments seriously, not least because he had already publicly said he wanted to bring Canada to its knees. In a news conference on Jan. 7, before being inaugurated, Trump, responding to a question by a New York Times reporter about whether he was planning to use military force to annex Canada, said he planned to use “economic force.”

“While the current U.S. Canada's trade war is ‘unprecedented’ in modern history, it is unsurprising in the context of Trump”, Aaron Ettinger, a political science professor at Carleton University in Ottawa said to Al Jazeera.

Ettinger added that, while people in the U.S. and Canada keep trying to find the rationale behind Trump’s actions, the president may ultimately be “employing tactics without strategy.”

U.S. President Keeps Making False Claims About Canada

Trump began his campaign of diplomatic trolling before he had even assumed office, questioning Canada’s viability as a nation, suggesting that it could become the 51st American state, and deriding the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, as a “governor.”

He keeps saying he wants Canada to become the 51st U.S. state, falsely claiming to reporters in January that “the people of Canada like” his idea of Canada joining the U.S. 

One recent poll has shown the idea is massively unpopular, with 85% opposed, 9% in favor, the idea is overwhelmingly unpopular with the Canadian public as a whole. 

Canada’s Tariffs

U.S. President added to his rapidly growing list of false claims about Canada, wrongly asserting on social media that Canada is “ONE OF THE HIGHEST TARIFFING NATIONS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.”

In fact, Canada has long had relatively low tariffs, though it has this month announced a series of new retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. in direct response to Trump’s own new tariffs on Canada. 

Canada was just 102nd-highest on a World Bank list of 137 countries’ trade-weighted average tariff rates in 2022 – and had a lower average (1.37%) than the United States (1.49%) that year.

Canada’s Defense Spending

The President falsely claimed in January that Canada spends “less than 1%” of GDP on defense. Official NATO figures show Canada spent an estimated 1.37% of GDP on defense in 2024, up from an estimated 1.31% in 2023 and from 1.2% in 2022. That’s all short of NATO’s 2% target, which incoming Prime Minister Mark Carney has vowed to meet by 2030.

Canada and U.S. banks

Trump falsely claimed in both February and March that Canada prohibits U.S. banks. While Canada’s tight regulations have discouraged many foreign banks from opening retail branches there, U.S. banks have been operating in Canada for well over a century. 

The Canadian Bankers Association industry group said in a February statement that “there are 16 U.S.-based bank subsidiaries and branches with around C$113 billion in assets currently operating in Canada” and that “U.S. banks now make up approximately half of all foreign bank assets in Canada.”

Trudeau and the Trade War

The U.S. President said in a social media post Thursday: “I think that Justin Trudeau is using the Tariff problem, which he has largely caused, in order to run again for Prime Minister.” 

Trudeau announced in January that he would step down after the new leader was chosen. Trudeau’s successor Mark Carney was chosen as prime minister in a party vote three days following Trump’s post.

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