Trump’s ‘51st State’ Folly

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Tuesday, April 29, 2025

 

Forgive me, if you will, for shuffling swiftly past all the glitter and diversions and obsequious fawning, and for instead electing to focus on such anachronistic and prosaic questions as “why?” and “what?” But I would be forever indebted if a single quasi-literate person in this country could explain to me what the hell was the point in Donald Trump’s relentless and often vehement insistence that Canada ought to become the 51st state.

 

“It was funny” won’t suffice, I’m afraid. I am told as a matter of unlovely routine that Trump’s ongoing presence in our national life is necessary because the alternatives are feckless and weak and incapable of conserving anything, and so, with that in mind, I must sedulously press the point: What did Trump get out of this ploy? What did America gain? What did Republican voters achieve? What was improved for conservatism, or nationalism, or MAGA, or whatever other Trump-coded movements are the supposed beneficiaries of his maneuvers? Where, as the old advertisement liked to inquire, is the beef?

 

Because, from where I’m sitting, the whole incident looks monumentally, comprehensively, impressively stupid. Even on his own terms, Trump’s position never made any sense. As far as I can tell, the president’s two major complaints about Canada are (1) that Americans still receive a small amount of fentanyl over the border, and (2) that the United States has a small trade deficit with the country — both of which, quite obviously, would end up being more difficult to remedy were Canada to become a state. If Canada were, indeed, to enter the Union, it would be tougher, not easier, to control the flow of illicit goods between it and the other 50 states, and it would be flatly unconstitutional for Congress to do anything about the trade deficit. It is, I suppose, indisputably true that the map of North America would be somewhat simplified by such an accord, but, while I admittedly have lived in these United States for only 14 years, this does not seem to be an issue about which any real human being has thought for more than three-quarters of a second. Did I miss a memo, or skip a meeting of the Washington, D.C., Simplified Cartography Club?

 

One might have thought, having written a book titled The Art of the Deal, that Trump would comprehend how to induce a win-win. And yet, in this instance, he managed somehow to devise a scenario in which, irrespective of what outcome eventually came to fruition, he was guaranteed to make things worse for himself and his movement.

 

If Trump had got his way, and persuaded the Canadians to join the United States, he would have substantially bolstered the American left, and the Democratic Party through which it works, and thereby improved the political fortunes of all manner of ideas that he claims emphatically to oppose. Clearly, an America that included one — or ten — Canadian states would be an America in which the Republican Party would struggle mightily to win elections, in which socially progressive ideas would be more popular, in which the First and Second Amendments would be less secure, and in which Trump’s own brand of populism would have less purchase. Asked about this recently, Trump bluntly acknowledged it, before suggesting that it would be worth it, nevertheless.

 

And if he didn’t get his way? We no longer have to guess. Evidently, Canada is not interested in joining the United States. Indeed, it turns out that Canada is so profoundly uninterested in joining the United States that the mere suggestion of ineluctable or involuntary concatenation has made its people rather cross. And, being rather cross, those people just decided to turn the 25-point polling lead that was once enjoyed by Canada’s Conservative Party into a narrow victory for Canada’s Liberal Party. Were this reaction the unfortunate interim cost of a smart, salutary, and deliberate proposal, then one could perhaps construct a case that it was worthwhile. But Trump’s “51st state” foray was not smart or salutary or deliberate, and the justifications that were marshaled in its defense made no sense either for Trump or for the United States writ large. Logically, there were always just two plausible consequences of Trump’s rhetoric: (a) that it would lead to an acceptance of his offer — which would have empowered the left in America, or (b) that it would lead to a rejection of his offer — which would have empowered the left in Canada. And why would anyone in his right mind wish to do either of those things?

 

In the grand sweep of history, this does not represent a great crisis. But it does represent a missed opportunity — and a missed opportunity of the sort that Trump’s acolytes usually insist is the preserve of the “establishment” types that they have taken great care to exile from the scene. Canada is physically attached to the United States. Its fate is important to us — economically, diplomatically, militarily, culturally, and otherwise. That being so, it ought to be self-evident that it would benefit our own right-of-center government if the Canadian government were right-of-center, too. In a whole host of areas — including, crucially, our policy toward China — a Canada run by the conservative Pierre Poilievre would have been preferable for the Trump administration to a Canada run by the progressive Mark Carney. With his idiotic behavior, Donald Trump has helped to engineer precisely the opposite result. And for what? To which end? Why?