Trump Threats Shape Canada’s Succession Race Before It Has Really Begun

The race to be Canada’s next prime minister is still at the starting line and Donald Trump has already cast a shadow over it.

The US president-elect made his most menacing comments yet about Canada on Tuesday, suggesting his administration could use “economic force” to turn the country into a US state. Trump repeated his claim that the US trade deficit is a subsidy and his intention to impose “serious” tariffs on goods the US buys from Canada and Mexico.

His comments ensure that the Canada-US relationship — and who can best deal with an emboldened Trump — will be a top issue in the contest to lead Liberal Party. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau triggered that race on Monday when he said he’ll step down once his successor is chosen. 

Already, one of the country’s most senior cabinet ministers has decided he won’t run. Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc said Wednesday he’s staying out of the race to focus on his work as the point person for the government in dealing with the US. 

“The threat these tariffs pose to our nation’s economic well-being and to the livelihood of a countless number of Canadian families cannot be understated — and as such, it requires nothing less than my full attention,” LeBlanc wrote on social media site X. 

The leadership contest may take a couple of months, which means a new leader might step into the job of prime minister in the midst of a trade war and a recession in Canada. 

Dealing with Trump “isn’t just the most pressing foreign policy challenge we face. The domestic implications are so profound,” said Scott Reid, a former adviser to Paul Martin, Canada’s prime minister from 2003 to 2006. “It is the No. 1 policy challenge that the country is going to endure in this next number of months.”

Those taunts about Canada becoming the 51st US state brought a rebuke from Trudeau — “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell,” he wrote Tuesday — and from some of his potential successors. 

“President-elect Trump’s comments show a complete lack of understanding of what makes Canada a strong country,” Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly said on X. “Our economy is strong. Our people are strong. We will never back down in the face of threats.” 

Trump has complained about the size of the US trade deficit with Canada, falsely overstating it as $100 billion or more. Last year the number was $41 billion for goods and services. For goods alone it was about $72 billion, according to US Census Bureau data.  

That trade deficit is a direct result of US thirst for Canadian energy. If you remove oil and gas from the equation, the US actually enjoys a significant trade surplus with its northern neighbor, according to calculations by economists at National Bank of Canada. 

But Trump and his aides are clearly determined to impose widespread tariffs on US trading partners. Whoever is representing Canada’s interests after Trudeau’s departure won’t be able to win the day on logic alone, Reid said.