Trump's tariff threat could force Canada to face tough decisions on sovereignty

It's hard to imagine President Emmanuel Macron of France joking about annexing Belgium.

Donald Trump's posts and memes about turning Canada into the 51st state are almost without parallel among western democracies, said Carlo Dade, director of trade at the Canada West Foundation.

"This isn't 'Lower Lukistan' and 'Upper Lukistan' calling each other names again. That's something we expect, and we might expect it at that level of elected retail politicians running off at the mouth," he said.

"Where you don't expect it is from the most senior leadership. You don't expect that with countries that have had historic friendly relations and that are mature democracies."

Trump's comments, which he and his allies have downplayed as mere trolling, pale in comparison to the rhetoric about missile strikes and special forces incursions that his supporters have deployed against Mexico.

But they are a sure sign that Canada is dealing with an administration that cares little for the niceties of sovereignty. Both Canada and Mexico will have to balance their need to maintain cross-border trade with protecting their ability to make decisions and control what happens within their own borders.

Dade said Canada and Mexico have reacted somewhat differently to Trump's threats, in ways that reflect their traditionally different approaches to Washington.

Mexicans have always seen the United States as the country that invaded them in 1846 and took half their national territory. Canadians' greater willingness to accept that U.S. intentions are benign can be seen in the two countries' different attitudes to customs pre-clearance, under a treaty that allows U.S. border control officers to operate in Canadian airports.

Dade observed that difference when he was participating in discussions on a possible North America-wide trusted traveller program.

"The take was we could get rid of issues like the visa issue if we had an integrated system," he said. "And the Mexicans basically said, 'You all have just lost your minds.'

"There was no way they would allow U.S. law enforcement to enforce U.S. law on Mexican soil, to stop, question, search Mexican citizens. We had two really, really stark differences of opinion. Canadians were like, 'If it gets me to skip a half-hour line in Vegas, sign me up.'"

The practical result is that while the U.S. and Canada collaborate on the NEXUS traveller program for citizens of both countries, the Americans unilaterally set up a SENTRI program aimed at Mexicans that operates with little or no Mexican government input.

And despite the sovereignty rhetoric — which Dade said is as formulaic in Mexican political discourse as "God Bless America" is to U.S. politicians — Mexico has in practice been forced to accept deeper U.S. intrusions into its sovereignty than Canada.

In Canada, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is limited to two small liaison offices housed within the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa and the Vancouver consulate. In Mexico, the DEA operates a dozen field offices and its agents there are armed. Under the terms of the 2008 Merida Initiative, the U.S. even has a role in "accrediting" Mexican prisons as secure.