At the end of the 19th century, Canada was saved from being annexed by the United States thanks, in large part, to Spain. With Donald Trump in the White House, the threat is repeated and Canadians wonder what will happen now.

After winning the presidential election in November 2024, Trump made it clear that as soon as he reached the White House he would impose 25% tariffs on Canada.

Alarmed by the possibility of taxes that would devastate the Canadian economy, which allocates up to 70% of its exports to the neighboring country, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau traveled to Mar-a-Lago, Florida, to have dinner with the then president-elect and try to defuse the threat.

During that dinner in November 2024, Trump told Trudeau that if Canada wanted to avoid tariffs, the country would have to become the 51st state of the United States.

Since then, the Republican has repeated his interest in the annexation of Canada, even using “economic force” to bend his neighbor and ally.

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The last time was last Thursday when in the Oval Office, Trump insinuated that Canada as a failed country, unable to defend itself against the threats of Russia or China.

“I think Canada is going to be a very serious candidate to be our 51st state,” Trump explained.

The idea of the US annexing Canada is not new. But for more than a century it had practically disappeared from Washington’s political vocabulary.

After snatching much of its territory from Mexico (from Texas to California) in the first half of the 19th century, in the second half, especially after the end of its civil war in 1865, the United States regularly repeated the idea of taking over the British colonies of North America, what today is Canada.

By then, the United Kingdom considered these colonies a political, economic and military burden. And in a quiet way he had practically decided that his defense was not worth it in case the United States decided to appropriate them.

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Paradoxically, as Andrew Johnston, professor of History at Carleton University of Ottawa, pointed out to EFE, it was the American attempts to annex the British colonies that forced their unification in 1867 in the Canadian Confederation.

“The US’ desire to absorb Canada was what actually pushed the British Empire and the inhabitants here to organize themselves into independent colonies and later into an independent nation,” he explained.

The creation of Canada that year, and the expansion of the new country to the west (until 1871 the province of British Columbia was not incorporated into the Confederation), did not stop the American expansionist desires.

This required a change of mentality in Washington. And Spain.

As the authors Gwynne Dyer and Tina Viljoen point out in their book ‘The Defense of Canada’ by the late nineteenth century, the United States had become a more industrial country.

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“The old impulse for territorial expansion was ceasing to be a central issue in American life and the new imperialism that soon replaced it was almost no threat to Canada: what Washington now wanted were overseas colonies as the European empires had,” the two authors point out.

So in April 1898, with William McKinley in the Presidency, the United States declared war on Spain and before the end of that year, Washington had its overseas possessions: Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam.

Precisely McKinley is Trump’s idol, who has described him as “the king of tariffs”, for being the main driver of the legislation that at the end of the 19th century imposed tariffs of 50% on imports of goods into the United States.

That parallelism between Trump and McKinley does not escape Professor Johnston. “What Trump is expressing is something that I think has always been present in the minds of Americans, particularly after the revolution: that they have a historical mission,” he said.

But Johnston also believes that as in 1867, when the longings for annexation of the United States forced the creation of Canada, Trump’s threats will provoke another cathartic moment that has already begun with the renewed patriotism that the Canadian population has been demonstrating in recent months.

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