Canada as the 51st State: Trump's Absurd Vision
President-elect Trump has proposed annexing Canada and making it the 51st state. That is a ridiculous idea
With the incoming Trump administration, there is a litany of inane ideas being thrown around. As I noted earlier this week, the nominations of Pete Hegseth and RFK Jr. are just one example of this insanity. However, there is another idea proposed by President-elect Trump that is even more ridiculous: the annexation of Canada. In a post on Truth Social, Trump falsely claimed that Canadians wants to join the United States as the 51st state.
No one can answer why we subsidize Canada to the tune of over $100,000,000 a year? Makes no sense! Many Canadians want Canada to become the 51st State. They would save massively on taxes and military protection. I think it is a great idea. 51st State!!! 1
Getting Statistics Wrong
The argument, if there is one to be made, is that the United States is subsiding the Canadian government for no reason, and to an extreme extent. Through this supposedly extreme subsidizing project, the U.S. is wasting money when it could simply make Canada a part of the United States. This argument is not only flawed and imperialistic, but it blatantly false.
The United States hasn’t provided anywhere near the amount of aid to Canada that Trump is suggesting. According to Snopes, the United States hasn’t spent anywhere near $35.1 million since 2001. The most recent data available shows that between October of 2021 and September of 2022, the total amount of said sent to Canada was roughly $32 million in aid to Canada. In the simplest of terms, the U.S. is not providing anywhere near the amount of money that Trump is suggests. 2
Even if he was correct, it still wouldn’t justify his core contention: that Canada should be part of the United States. While Trump argues that Canadians want to join the United States, the reality is much different. A December poll found that 82 percent of Canadians oppose Canada becoming a state, with only 13 percent saying they support the move. 3 Canadians don’t want to be part of the United States.
Absurdity and Imperialism
The reality is that Trump’s calls for making Canada the 51st state are part of a larger pattern of absurd ramblings from the incoming President-elect. He has previously suggested using the military against Mexican cartels and buying Greenland from Denmark. 45
Trump’s ramblings are, at their core, an attempt to project strength on the world stage without ever engaging with the actual substance of foreign policy. By repeating the absurd ideas of annexing Canada and Greenland, Trump is able to avoid responsibility for his incoherent strategy on the world stage. While it is difficult to see how this will go, it is increasingly clear that Trump isn’t about to let go of these absurd ideas anytime soon.
Donald Trump, “Truth Social,” Truth Social, December 18, 2024, https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113672861551554010.
Grace Deng, “Trump Said U.S. Subsidizes Canada With More Than $100M a Year — But He’s Wrong,” Snopes, December 19, 2024, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/us-canada-100-million-subsidy/.
Daniel Dale, “Fact Check: Debunking Trump’s False Claims about Canada | CNN Politics,” CNN, January 13, 2025, https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/13/politics/fact-check-trumps-false-claims-canada/index.html.
Kevin Maurer, “Here’s What Trump’s Mexico Invasion Plan Could Look Like,” Rolling Stone, January 2, 2025, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/heres-what-trumps-mexico-invasion-plan-could-look-like/ar-AA1wR7Ym?ocid=BingNewsSerp.
Richard Milne, “Why Donald Trump Wants Greenland,” Financial Times, January 9, 2025, sec. Geopolitics, https://www.ft.com/content/26b2c424-b163-447b-94a7-ffe5a21f3807.