ottawaOutgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took to social media after President-elect Trump mused about using “economic force” to regain Canada’s status as the 51st state during his Mar-a-Lago news conference on Tuesday. But replied, “There’s no chance of a snowball.” In hell Canada will become part of the United States.”
However, as Trudeau announced Monday that he will resign as prime minister once the Liberal Party, which he leads, selects his successor, Trump’s plan to take over Canada — and exports from the country But their planned 25% tariffs – the biggest blow to this. Head of Canada’s most populous province, Ontario.
Doug Ford, a former businessman and Trump-like conservative who has served as the 26th premier of Ontario since 2018, told Fox News Digital in an interview that the president-elect’s targeting of Canada is “insane” and “ridiculous.” Both are there.
He said the bilateral focus should be on “strengthening” what the Canadian government calls a nearly trillion-dollar two-way trade relationship to “make the United States and Canada the richest and most prosperous jurisdiction in the world.”
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Ontario Prime Minister Doug Ford speaks to members of the media while arriving for a meeting in Ottawa, Canada on February 7, 2023. (James Park/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
At a Toronto news conference Monday after Trudeau’s resignation was announced, Ford rebuked Trump by offering a “counterproposal” to the idea of Canada as the 51st state.
“How about if we buy Alaska and put it in Minnesota?” The premier said at the legislature in Queen’s Park, Ontario.
Ford jokingly told Fox News Digital that he heard from Canadians after making these comments that they should have chosen “a warmer place like Florida or California.”
“California never votes for him,” he said.
At his Monday news conference, the premier of Ontario said that “under my watch,” Occupy Canada “will never happen.”
Ford is also taking Trump’s tariff threat seriously.
President-elect Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speak before a NATO meeting in Watford, Hertfordshire, England on December 4, 2019. (AP Photo/Frank Augustine, File)
Last month, his Progressive Conservative government launched a multimillion-dollar U.S. advertising campaign on television and streaming apps touting Ontario as an “ally” to generate “more workers, more business, more prosperity, more security.”
The 60-second ad says, “You can count on Ontario for critical minerals for energy and new technologies to power our growing economy.”
Ford said the 25% tariffs against Canada, which Trump plans to impose on his first day in office on Jan. 20, would hurt millions of American and Canadian workers.
“Nine million Americans produce products for Ontario alone every day,” he said. “The problem is that China is shipping goods to Mexico and Mexico is putting a made-in-Mexico sticker.”
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The Government Efficiency Department is led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Ford, who previously was involved in renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement during the Trump administration, said Ontario is prepared to take retaliatory measures “that would really send a message to the U.S.” in response to the imposition of U.S. tariffs, but now Canada would like it to. Make separate deals with America and Mexico.
“It’s unfortunate because retaliation is not good for any country,” he said, noting that Ontario is the top exporter in 17 states and the second-largest exporter in 11 other states.
“The last thing I want to do is hurt those people,” Ford said. “I want to create more jobs in America, more jobs in Canada. And we can do that by making sure we’re tough and put tariffs on places like China.”
For example, he said that “somebody in Texas bought a GM pickup truck made in Oshawa, [Ontario] Would have paid between $50,000 and $60,000,” and with tariffs, “would have paid about $70 thousand.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Ford said.
Tractor trailers move across the Ambassador Bridge border crossing from Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit, Michigan on February 14, 2022. (Geoff Robbins/AFP via Getty Images)
He would like to meet face-to-face with Trump and said he has contacted US senators and governors to make that happen. Sitting down with SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk — who was appointed by Trump to co-lead, with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswami, the proposed “Department of Government Efficiency” — is also on Ford’s wish-list.
Ford said Trump “doesn’t realize” that Ontario is the US’s third-largest trading partner, amounting to about US$344 billion in 2023, “split evenly down the centre.”
The Prime Minister of Ontario said he wants to send more electricity and critical minerals to the US, which “needs them just like we need them.”
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In 2012, the prime minister and his late brother, Rob, who was mayor of Toronto at the time, met Trump with his daughter Ivanka when they were in the city to open the former Trump International Hotel and Tower, now defunct. Is. Known as the Trump Organization and the St. Regis Toronto.
Ford, who ran a Toronto-based family business, Deco Labels & Flexible Packaging, before entering municipal politics as a city councilor in 2010, considers Trump “a shrewd operator” and “a smart businessman.”
The incoming president “knows about Ontario,” the prime minister said.
“Not a single senator, not a single governor, not a single congressman or businessman has said that Canada is a problem,” said Ford, who opened a Deco branch in Chicago in 1999.
He said Trump is not targeting other US allies like Britain and France but instead wants to target Canada, America’s “closest friend”.
The Prime Minister of Ontario said, “I’m not sure if it’s personal against Trudeau, but Trudeau is on his way out, so hopefully we’ll have a better conversation.” He said he would consider participating in federal politics. Future.
On Monday, Trump posted on Truth Social that “the United States can no longer afford the massive trade deficits and subsidies that are necessary to keep Canada afloat.”
Doug Ford campaigns at Cambrian College in Sudbury, Northern Ontario on April 11, 2018. (Steve Russell/Toronto Star)
“Justin Trudeau knows this and he resigned,” said the next and 47th US president.
But Trudeau is still prime minister, and Ford and the prime ministers of the other nine provinces and three territories will meet with him in Ottawa next Wednesday to address the Trump tariffs issue.
Despite his departure as prime minister in the next two months, when the next Liberal leader is expected to be elected, Trudeau should not think “he’s in trouble” and the Canadian prime minister is committed to ensuring “his “Will keep our feet to the fire,” Ford said, ready to respond to the Trump administration’s impending and punitive trade measures.
According to a statement released last month, he chairs the Federation Council – an assembly of Canadian prime ministers that has put Canada-US relations at the top of the list and made avoiding US tariffs a “priority”.
“Canada and the US are one of the world’s largest integrated markets with more than C$3.5 billion [about US$2.4 billion] The price of goods and services crossing the border each day. The United States sells more goods and services to Canada than it sells to China, Japan and Germany combined.”
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To help assuage Trump’s concerns over border security, Ford’s government launched “Operation Deterrence” on Tuesday to crack down on illegal crossings, drugs and guns — 90% of which enter Ontario from the U.S. Are doing, the premier told Fox News Digital.
On drugs, he said his government was also cooperating with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to identify the source of the fentanyl ingredients – and whether they originated in “China or Mexico or the US”.
Last month, the Trudeau government announced its border-security plan.
