Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told last Friday’s emergency “national economic summit” that US President Donald Trump’s threat to use “economic force” to annex Canada is a “real thing.”
Trudeau tied Trump’s push to “absorb” Canada to America’s drive to secure “critical minerals”—that is the minerals that are essential for the production of both high-value commodities, from cars to computers, and the making of the advanced weapons and weapon systems needed to wage global war.
Addressing the assembly of business leaders and trade union bureaucrats after he thought all reporters had been ushered from the conference hall, Trudeau said: “Not only does the Trump administration know how many critical minerals we have, but that may be even why they keep talking about absorbing us and making us the 51st state.”
“They’re very aware,” he continued, “of our resources, of what we have and they very much want to be able to benefit from those. But Mr. Trump has it in mind that one of the easiest ways of doing that is absorbing our country. And it is a real thing.”
Trudeau’s remarks are a staggering admission from the head of a G-7 imperialist government. One, moreover, that has been a key military-strategic partner of Washington for more than eight decades, is America’s single biggest trading partner, and has long been touted as its “best friend” and “closest ally.”
His comments are symptomatic of the extent to which inter-state relations have broken down as Washington under the fascist Trump and the banner of “America First” leads an increasingly frenzied struggle for the imperialist redivision of the world. This struggle is pitting the imperialist and great powers against each other, rivals and nominal “allies” alike, to seize hold of resources, production networks, pools of labour to exploit, and strategic territories.
Canadian imperialism played an important role in preparing and instigating the US-NATO war on Russia over Ukraine. Above, a Ukrainian soldier undergoing training in urban warfare as part of the Canadian Armed Forces’ now seven year-long military training mission in Ukraine, Operation Unifier. [Photo: Government of Canada]
As in the two imperialist world wars of the last century, Canada’s capitalist ruling class is a protagonist in this conflict. With the aim of securing its own predatory imperialist interests, it has integrated Canada ever more completely into the US drive for global hegemony, including in the developing world war that Washington is waging on three fronts. Canada has played a major role in helping instigate and prosecute the US-NATO war against Russia, has staunchly supported the US drive in conjunction with its client Israel to create a “new Middle East,” and is an integral part of the US economic and military-strategic offensive against China.
But to the dismay of Canada’s capitalist elite, predatory Canadian imperialism has now become prey for US imperialism under Trump. He is pushing to annex Canada as part of a drive to establish unbridled US domination over North America in preparation for world war with Russia and China, and intensifying trade and geopolitical conflict with Washington and Wall Street’s European NATO partners and rivals.
This process is akin to Hitler’s push for Anschluss (the joining of Austria to his Third Reich) and subsequent dismemberment of Czechoslovakia—pivotal preparatory steps to Nazi Germany’s launching of a broader European war. Trump aims to “reorder” US imperialism’s “near-abroad” and thereby gain unfettered control of its strategic territories and abundant resources.
Toward this end, he has threatened to militarily seize Greenland and the Panama Canal, and, in keeping with his inaugural vow that America will resume its territorial expansion, repeatedly declared that Canada should become the “51st state.”
Trump’s global trade war
Trump has also launched a global trade war, whose primary target is China, and which will be waged at the expense of the jobs, living standards, and working conditions of workers around the world.
