Trump says ‘Canada thinks they’re a state’ as he defends bitter trade war with US neighbor

Donald Trump has defended his bitter trade war with Canada by arguing that America’s neighbor to the north is not a state and therefore not eligible for favorable terms.

The president has made repeated overtures to Canada about becoming the 51st state, which were angrily rejected and only served to whip up a mood of anti-Trump patriotic fervor across the border.

Now though, as the trade war between the two allies deepens, Trump appears keen to remind Canada that it is not part of the United States.

“We lose all of this tremendous money,” Trump told Fox News host Trey Gowdy Sunday. “They think they’re a state, but they’re not a state. Why should we be subsidizing Canada?”

Last week, the Trump administration placed new 50 percent tariffs on a range of Canadian exports after trade talks between the two countries collapsed, leading Prime Minister Mark Carney to respond in kind, pledging to mirror U.S. levies “dollar for dollar.”

Amid a war of words with Canadian officials, notably Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Trump announced he was renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America,” just as he renamed the Gulf of Mexico last year after falling out with America’s neighbor to the south.

Ford told ABC’s This Week Sunday the president’s aggressions were “the worst thing you could do for the American economy” and “absolutely backwards,” comparing the pettiness of his renaming stunt to “something out of Saturday Night Live.”

The president took to Truth Social Sunday to demand that all Canadian companies expecting to continue to do business with the U.S. reshore their headquarters within its borders.

“Many of them are Companies that moved out years ago due to stupid U.S. Leadership,” the president wrote. “When you move back, there are no TARIFFS!”

In a separate post, he argued that Canada, America’s second-largest trading partner, was also one of its worst, despite the two countries conducting almost $900 billion in cross-border business every year, according to the U.S. trade representative.

“I don’t want Canadian cars, I don’t want Canadian parts, I don’t want Canadian anything,” Trump fumed. “They’ve been ripping us off for decades, and it’s going to stop.”

The president has claimed to have revived the U.S. auto manufacturing sector since returning to power but the Big Three car giants continue to rely on imported parts from Canada, hence their exemption for previous tariff hikes.

Elsewhere in Trump’s Fox interview with Gowdy, he claimed there would be no Israel if he were not occupying the White House, attacked his detractors on Iran by claiming to be winning his war against the country “easily,” defended his decision to end joint military drills with South Korea and bragged about his golf game.