‘Keir Starmer should stand up for Canada and other Trump tariff targets’

Along with golden curtains and much else ejected during Joe Biden’s presidency, Donald Trump has returned a portrait of Andrew Jackson to the Oval office. America’s populist seventh president shattered the political establishment set up by its revolutionary founding fathers – a cast of often well-educated, Enlightenment liberals. In his second term in office, is Mr Trump now finding historical inspiration in Jackson’s forthright support for ‘Manifest Destiny’?

The belief that the US had a God-given right to expand its boundaries to bring ‘freedom’ throughout the north American continent is one of the only observable origins for Trump’s new imperialism.

First considered laughable, Mr Trump has repeatedly threatened Canada’s sovereignty – with outgoing Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau believing Trump is indeed serious about annexing the US’s northern neighbour. Not unlike his wild proposal to ‘own’ Gaza, there is little if any clear source for these ideas. 

Despite the severity of these threats to a NATO ally and Commonwealth country, Canada’s closest allies – including the UK – have been noticeably silent. 

There are few obvious reasons for why the US should annex Canada. Mr Trump’s bogus $200bn ‘subsidy’ for Canada is actually a $45bn trade deficit tied to Canada’s export of cheap energy to the US – which American consumers are the beneficiaries of at the pump. The border issue, where Trump blames Canada for migrant and drug flows, is a problem that works both ways and could be managed through cooperation – which he knows. Grasping at straws to justify his alarming proposal, Mr Trump threw in access for US banks to high street Canadian consumers. He’s making this up as he goes along.

READ MORE: ‘Starmer’s US trip was a diplomatic triumph but many more challenges lie ahead’

The other possibility, as with his shock Gaza proposal, is his strategy of changing the bounds of negotiations by starting the bidding with an inconceivable demand – only to make his desired preference, however untenable, more palatable. But Mr Trump forced Canada and Mexico to renegotiate north American free trade during his first term, which both countries grudgingly did. It’s not clear what years of further negotiation, even with such a big stick, would achieve to benefit the US.

Canada represents no political or security threat to the US – it will never align with a US rival like Russia or China. Canada is as advanced and predictable a trading partner as they come – the US couldn’t ask for a better backyard. From a US domestic politics perspective, a Canadian 51st state would vote Democrat more reliably than California. 

There is Canada’s abundant resources, including critical minerals, oil and also, water. However, again, the US already has greater access to these reserves than any other state. It is therefore hard to explain the president’s annexation threat as anything other than stone-cold imperialism. As Keir Starmer tries to navigate Mr Trump’s unpredictability, presumably with a view to keeping the UK’s head down as he fires at the EU and other states – he also needs to remember his commitment to protecting the rules-based international order.

It also ostrich-in-the-sand approach that ignores Mr Trump’s time-honoured strategy of pitting allies and enemies alike against one another to divide and rule. The UK would be far better off uniting with allies against these tariff and annexation threats and leading constructive negotiations with the new administration. 

When it comes to Canada, Mr Trump would do better to draw inspiration from another fixture in his Oval Office: Sir Winston Churchill, who called Canada the “linchpin of the English-speaking world”.  

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