After President Trump imposed prices in Canada on Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made an extraordinary statement which was largely lost in the fray of the moment.
“The excuse he gives for these prices today fentanyl is completely false, completely unjustified, completely false,” Trudeau told the media in Ottawa.
“What he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because it will facilitate the task of annexing us,” he added.
This is the story of how Mr. Trudeau has gone to think that Mr. Trump was joking when he described him as “governor” and “51st state” in early December to publicly declare that the nearest ally and the neighbor of Canada implemented a strategy of crushing the country in order to take over.
February calls
Trump and Mr. Trudeau spoke twice on February 3, once in the morning and again in the afternoon, as part of the discussions to avoid prices on Canadian exports.
But these calls in early February were not only prices.
Details of the conversations between the two leaders and the subsequent discussions between senior American and Canadian officials have not been fully reported and were shared with the New York Times on condition of anonymity by four people with first -hand knowledge of their content. They did not want to be identified publicly to discuss a sensitive subject.
On these calls, President Trump has exposed a long list of grievances he had with trade relations between the two countries, including the Protected Dairy sector of Canada, the difficulty of American banks encountered in business in Canada and Canadian consumption taxes that Trump deems unfair because they make American goods more expensive.
He also mentioned something much more fundamental.
He told Mr. Trudeau that he did not believe that the treaty which delimits the border between the two countries was valid and that he wanted to revise the border. He did not offer any other explanation.
Trump’s border treaty was created in 1908 and finalized the international border between Canada, then British domination and the United States.
Trump also mentioned revisiting the sharing of lakes and rivers between the two nations, which is regulated by a certain number of treaties, a subject that has expressed his interest in the past.
Canadian officials took the comments of Mr. Trump seriously, especially because he had already said publicly that he wanted to put Canada on his knees. At a press conference on January 7, before being inaugurated, Mr. Trump, answering a question from a New York Times journalist to find out if he planned to use the military force to annex Canada, said he was planning to use “economic strength”.
The White House did not respond to a request for comments.
During the second call of February 3, Mr. Trudeau obtained a month’s post of these prices.
This week, the American prices entered into force without a new stay on Tuesday. Canada, in return, imposed its own prices on American exports, plunging the two nations into a trade war. (Thursday, Mr. Trump gave Canada a month -long suspension on most prices.)
Overviews of the break between Mr. Trump and Mr. Trudeau, and Mr. Trump’s aggressive plans for Canada, have become apparent in recent months.
Toronto star, a Canadian newspaper, reported That Trump mentioned the border treaty from 1908 to the start of the call and other details of the conversation. And financial time reported That there are discussions in the White House on the elimination of Canada of a crucial intelligence alliance among five nations, attributing them to a main advisor to Trump.
Double
But it is not only the president who talks about the border and the waters with Mr. Trudeau who disturbed the Canadian side.
Persistent social media refers to Canada as a 51st state and Mr. Trudeau as governor had started to grate both inside the Canadian government and more broadly.
Although Mr. Trump’s remarks can all be boastful or a negotiation tactic to put Canada in the concessions on trade or border security, the Canadian part no longer believes it.
And the awareness that the Trump administration examined a closer and more aggressive look at the relationship, which followed with these threats of annexation, flowed during the later calls between Trump senior officials and Canadian counterparts.
One of these calls was between the Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick – who at the time had not yet been confirmed by the Senate – and the Minister of Canada, Dominic Leblanc. The two men communicated regularly since they met in Mar-A-Lago, the home and Mr. Trump’s club in Florida, during Mr. Trudeau’s visit there in early December.
Lunick called Mr. Leblanc after the leaders spoke on February 3 and published a devastating message, according to several people familiar with the call: Trump, he said, realized that the relationship between the United States and Canada was governed by a series of actions and treaties that are easy to abandon.
Trump was interested in doing exactly that, said Lutnick.
He wanted to expel Canada from an intelligence group known as five eyes which also includes Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
He wanted to tear the agreements and conventions of the great lakes between the two nations which explain how they share and manage the superior lakes, Huron, Erie and Ontario.
And it also examines military cooperation between the two countries, in particular the command of the North American aerospace defense.
A spokesperson for Mr. Lunick did not respond to a comment request. A spokesperson for Mr. Leblanc refused to comment.
In subsequent communications between senior Canadian officials and Trump advisers, this list of subjects has appeared again and again, which makes the Canadian government difficult to reject them.
The only soothing nerves came from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the four families familiar with the case said. Mr. Rubio refrained from proposing threats and recently rejected the idea that the United States was considering removing military cooperation.
But Canada politicians through the Specter and Canadian Society as a whole are effiled and deeply concerned. Officials do not consider the threats of the Trump administration as empty; They see a new standard for the United States.
Thursday, at a press conference on Thursday, a journalist asked Mr. Trudeau: “Your Minister of Foreign Affairs qualified all this as a psychodrama yesterday. How would you characterize it?
“Thursday,” joked Mr. Trudeau.
