US President Donald Trump has said he is serious about wanting Canada to become the 51st state in an interview that aired during the Super Bowl pre-show.
“Yeah it is,” Mr Trump told Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier when asked whether his talk of annexing Canada is “a real thing” – as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently suggested.
“I think Canada would be much better off being the 51st state because we lose 200 billion dollars (£161 billion) a year with Canada. And I’m not going to let that happen,” he said.
The US is not subsidising Canada – it buys products from the natural resource-rich nation, including commodities such as oil.
While the trade gap in goods has ballooned in recent years to 72 billion dollars (£58 billion) in 2023, the deficit largely reflects America’s imports of Canadian energy.
Mr Trump has repeatedly suggested that Canada would be better off if it agreed to become the 51st US state – a prospect that is deeply unpopular among Canadians.
Mr Trudeau said on Friday during a closed-door session with business and labour leaders that Mr Trump’s talk of making Canada the 51st US state is “a real thing” and is linked to his desire for access to the country’s natural resources.
“Mr Trump has it in mind that the easiest way to do it is absorbing our country and it is a real thing. In my conversations with him on…” Mr Trudeau said, according to CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster.
“They’re very aware of our resources, of what we have and they very much want to be able to benefit from those.”
In Mr Trump’s interview, which was pre-taped this weekend in Florida, he also said that he has not seen enough action from Canada and Mexico to stave off the tariffs he has threatened to impose on the country’s two largest trading partners.
“Something has to happen. It’s not sustainable. And I’m changing it.”
Mr Trump last week agreed to a 30-day pause on his plan to slap Mexico and Canada with a 25% tariff on all imports except for Canadian oil, natural gas and electricity, which would be taxed at 10%, after the countries took steps to appease his concerns about border security and drug trafficking.
While travelling on Sunday on Air Force One to the championship game in New Orleans, Mr Trump said that he would on Monday announce a 25% tariff on all steel and aluminium imports into the US, including from Canada and Mexico, and a plan for reciprocal tariffs later in the week.
“Very simply it’s if they charge us, we charge them,” he said.
Mr Trump’s participation in the interview marked a return to tradition.
Presidents have typically granted a sit-down to the network broadcasting the Super Bowl game, the most-watched television event of the year.
But both Mr Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, were inconsistent in their participation.
During his first term, Mr Trump participated in three out of four years.
Mr Trump on Sunday will also become the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl in person – something he told Baier he was surprised to learn.
“I thought it would be a good thing for the country to have the president at the game,” he said.
During his flight to New Orleans, Mr Trump signed a proclamation declaring February 9 “the first ever Gulf of America Day” as Air Force One flew over the body of water that he renamed by proclamation from the Gulf of Mexico.
Mr Trump, in the interview, also defended the work of billionaire Elon Musk, whose so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been drawing deep concern from Democrats as he moves to shut down whole government agencies and sack large swathes of the federal workforce in the name of rooting out waste and inefficiency.
Mr Musk, Mr Trump said, has “been terrific”, and will target the Department of Education and the military next.
“We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse,” Mr Trump predicted.
He was also asked about his dancing, which has become a popular meme on social media.
“I don’t know what it is. I try and walk off sometimes without dancing and I can’t. I have to dance because it’s just that – something special about it,” Mr Trump responded.
