Summary
Donald Trump reiterated his claim that Canada would be better as the U.S.’s 51st state, citing trade imbalances and lower taxes.
He also announced new 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, including from Canada, despite a recent 30-day reprieve.
Canadian PM Justin Trudeau has not formally responded, but a government source said they await official confirmation.
Trump criticized Canada’s defense spending and border security, despite recent Canadian commitments.
Canada previously retaliated against similar tariffs in 2018 before a 2019 trade deal resolved the dispute.
I mean, even though I’m still not fully sure how American elections work, wouldn’t Canada be a huge blue state and lead to a lot more of Democrats winning?
kinda. It depends a bit on how we handle some of the stuff. Firstly, despite saying he wants to make Canada a state, he could make it a territory that gets 0 votes, which is straight up bullshit but exactly how it works. If he does make it a state, there’s still a lot of uncertainty.
Every state has gets 1 vote per representative. Senate has a fixed 100 members (2 per state). House currently has 435 members, divided by state population. If Canada is brought in as a single state, it would beat out California in size, but not by all that much. If we simply increased the house to accommodate the new state, Canada would have a bit over 52 electoral votes. If we add Canada’s 52-ish electoral votes to Kamala’s count, she still doesn’t have the electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Similarly, adding Canada’s 52-ish votes to Hillary’s count means she still loses. Literally giving Canada’s votes to the Dem candidate does not affect the last few elections results in a meaningful way. In fact, it would change almost none of the elections we’ve had in the last, like, ever.
However, that assumes they simply give Canada new reps, rather than redistributing the current ones. If they did a redistribution, electoral votes would be taken from the largest states. Any states with 3 electoral votes can’t have that reduced at all, and those with like 4-8 are unlikely to get the count reduced. Redistributing will affect California the most, followed by Texas, Florida, New York and so on. It’s… harder to analyze how that shift would shake out, but I wager still not particularly favorable shifts for blue states in general, meaning dems can’t actually expect an increase of 50-ish in that case, which means even less of a chance of flipping any results.
However, perhaps Canada gets split into a bunch of individual states rather than all one. If we assume each province-state gets 2 senate members and they collectively get 50 house members, you end up with 70 electoral votes (ignoring territories). If those all swing blue, Trump still wins 2016 and 2024. Both of those become far closer (2016 becomes 302 to 306 and 2024 becomes 296 to 312), presumably uncomfortably close.
And that’s assuming they all vote solid (D), actually get voting rights, voting is still free and fair, and voter suppression hasn’t become even more outlandish by then.
Anyways, our electoral vote system blows real bad.
Well that’s depressing, thanks.
Goes to show how badly the US needs electoral reform, though.
On the plus side, more senate and house seats would hopefully give Democrats the edge, but don’t forget that Alberta will vote MAGA.
Ah yes, sure, but you see with the magic of gerrymandering, they could bring them in but make sure all their votes collectively count about as much as 3 rednecks in Alabama, so don’t you worry about this pesky little detail.
I see, the land of the free really loves democracy.
You will be amazed by the power of gerrymandering.