It has been a few years since my last trip to the Florida panhandle, where our family had a vacation home on St. George Island, which offered many incredible charms including houses with views of both the Gulf of Mexico, as well as Apalachicola Bay.
And on the other end of the longtime North American Free Trade Zone, I love the views along the Canadian border, across the many Great Lakes, or the incredible sights of Niagara Falls. Toronto is one of my favorite places to visit and travel to on the planet. It seems like just yesterday that our closest neighbors and allies were much like extended family. At present those warm relations, at least between the nations and governments are quite a bit frostier.
In their first face to face meeting at the White House last week, new Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, reportedly said to President Donald Trump -
"Having met with the owners of Canada...it's not for sale and it won't be for sale ever."
President Trump tends to use a negotiating tactic called 'anchoring. Enter into contract negotiations. Declare you will only be satisfied by receiving the universe and at least one sun to fully meet your needs. Repeat declaration at every opportunity. Stun your negotiating partners and potential partners with the boldness of the ask. Continue this posture for a period of time. Negotiating partner eventually comes forward, assuming there are mutual needs for a deal to take place and says... "How about we give you a planet?"
Border communities and paired cities such as Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Canada; Vancounver, British Columbia and Seattle, WA; Niagara Falls Ontario and Niagara Falls, NewYork or even the town of Beebe Plain, Canada, which straddles the U.S./Canadian border, know all too well how closely intertwined the two peoples, regions and economies are. Canada has a population nearing 37-million, 10 provinces and 3 territories. The bulk of Canada’s population lives south of Seattle and clustered on the U.S. border, along the Great Lakes and North American waterways and canals which form much of the physical divide.
Thanks in part to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a trade treaty and act of Congress in 1994, Canada and Mexico, by a healthy measure, are our largest trade partners. Canada purchased $356.5 billion of American goods and exports during 2022, accounting for 17 percent of total U.S. exports. Mexico was a close second at $324.3 billion, with China a very distant third at $150.4 billion. Only one European nation made the top five, with the United Kingdom at $76.2 billion, and the U.S. has a trade surplus with Great Britain, meaning they are one of the few trade partners who BUY more U.S. goods than we purchase from them.
Alaska and Hawaii were originally both territories of the United States. Today the U.S. has governing, national defense and funding/trade alliances in place with 14 U.S. territories and nation-states, including Puerto Rico (where residents are also U.S. citizens), American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Missouri entered the U.S. as a territory (the Missouri Compromise), and Texas entered our union as a commonwealth. As a U.S. commonwealth, Canada could maintain its complete independence and sovereignty, trade borders and tariffs could be eliminated, national defense and energy/rare earth minerals agreements updated and finalized.
Having Canada become a state is fraught with logistical and legal challenges, well beyond opposition in The Great White North. Canada would overnight become second only to California in terms of state population. That new state would enter the Electoral College as well as have two U.S. Senators and a Congressional delegation roughly equivalent in size to California (52 U.S. House members). And while the Canadian Maple leaf and flag are predominantly Red and White, the population and politics of the majority of Canadian provinces and particularly the three which have 86% of Canada's population (Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia) are most decidedly Blue.
Adding the state of Canada would almost overnight shift control of the U.S. Congress to the Democratic Party, likely within two election cycles, and with California and Canada then controlling potentially 108 Electoral College votes, a path to victory and the White House would also be easily within reach every four years, with nearly 25-30 percent of the expanded nation's population within those two states. As this president claims expertise around the ‘art of the deal,’ perhaps he should also bone up on the law of unintended consequences. Guh’day eh!
