Trump Wanted Canada as the 51st State. He Ended Up Pushing It Toward the European Union.

 

News Analysis

Trump Wanted Canada as the 51st State. He Ended Up Pushing It Toward the European Union.

 

The invitation by the E.U. for Canada to become an “associate member” is a sign of Mr. Trump’s brand of diplomacy, which often involves threatening America’s closest friends.

 

President Donald J. Trump with Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada in the Oval Office last October. Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

By Luke Broadwater and Michael Crowley

Sept. 16, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/us/politics/trump-canada-51st-state-eu.html

 

Early in his second term, President Trump wanted Canada so entwined with the United States that he even set out to make it the 51st state. Instead, he has driven Canada into the arms of the European Union, after antagonizing the Canadians for months, taunting the country’s prime minister and waging a relentless trade war.

The invitation by the European Union on Wednesday for Canada to become an “associate member” is a sign of the knock-on effects of Mr. Trump’s brand of diplomacy, which often involves threatening countries that once were considered America’s closest friends.

And even if the gesture by the E.U. ends up being more symbolic than substantive, it shows how Mr. Trump is upending global relationships in ways that will be difficult to undo.

“We should see this action from Canada and the E.U. as a direct consequence of Trump’s actions and rhetoric,” said James Batchik, a deputy director at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center. “The rhetoric around making Canada the 51st state, and the threats against Greenland, which are still highly, highly, controversial and remembered in Brussels, are really reminders for both sides that the United States is not necessarily that trusted ally that it once was.”

At every turn, Mr. Trump’s bullying approach to Canada has appeared to backfire. His trade war stirred up trouble for embattled Republicans in swing states, endangering G.O.P. control of the Senate. And his hostility toward Canadian leaders helped surge the country’s struggling liberal party, no friend of Mr. Trump’s, to electoral victory.

President Trump responded to the E.U.’s overture to Canada with fury while speaking to reporters Wednesday night.

“Canada’s been a terrible trade partner,” he said. “No, I don’t see that. If they do that, if I think it’s at all a hostile act, I will put very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe on many things. So, if they do that, if Europe does that, with a bad intention — if it’s a good intention, that’s fine — if it’s a bad intention we’ll put very heavy tariffs on Europe, which is a possibility.”

Mr. Trump’s battle with Canada is part of his striking focus on a Western Hemisphere that recent presidents, typically consumed with the Middle East and Asia, have often neglected.

Mr. Trump, emboldened after a U.S. operation that toppled the leader of Venezuela, has set his sights this year on other countries in the Western Hemisphere. He has applied massive economic pressure against Cuba and proposed a “friendly takeover.” He has threatened to seize the Panama Canal and to wrest the North American island of Greenland from Denmark.

In an update of the Monroe Doctrine, the 1823 foundational statement of U.S. claims over the Western Hemisphere, with what he called the “Trump Corollary,” Mr. Trump formally declared that “the American people — not foreign nations nor globalist institutions — will always control their own destiny in our hemisphere.”

(Mr. Trump often refers to the concept as the “Donroe Doctrine,” named after himself.)

In the cases of Cuba and Venezuela, Mr. Trump’s policies are led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American whose interest in Latin America is driven by his strong anti-socialist ideology. Mr. Rubio has shown far less public enthusiasm for Mr. Trump’s territorial claims than he does for democratizing the region.

But Mr. Trump’s fixation with Canada is mainly rooted in trade and economics, not territory or politics.

The president started his second term threatening Canada’s previous leader, Justin Trudeau, whom Mr. Trump publicly derided, with unilaterally scrapping agreements that have governed the relationship between the neighboring countries for over a century.

He has imposed tariffs on Canada, which with Mexico is one of America’s two top trading partners, that are crippling some of Canada’s key economic sectors, such as autos, steel, aluminum and lumber.

In part because of Mr. Trump’s attacks, Canadians rallied around Mr. Trudeau’s successor, Prime Minister Mark Carney, who positioned himself as a fighter against the American president. This year, Mr. Carney delivered a speech in Davos, Switzerland, in which he called for a new world order, no longer led by America, prompting global political and corporate leaders in the audience to rise from their seats for a rare standing ovation.

“The middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” Mr. Carney said.

Liana Fix, a senior fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations, said it wasn’t clear what Canada becoming an “associate member” of the E.U. would mean, beyond trade and defense agreements already in place. But Canada and the European Union will meet for a summit at the end of October, when they are expected to lay out more concrete ideas.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union, has said Canada and Europe could work more closely together on the Arctic, their defense industrial bases and critical minerals.

“The E.U. wants to make a statement that the middle powers have a say and will not be bullied by the Trump administration,” Ms. Fix said.

The reaction of Canada and European leaders is perhaps unsurprising, given Mr. Trump’s penchant for attacking allies and playing nice with historic rivals, Mr. Batchik said.

“Donald Trump has been pulling his punches toward some of our adversaries, top of mind Russia and China, and doubling down and taking a rather gleeful approach to needling our previous would-be allies,” Mr. Batchik said. “You’re starting to see many across Europe taking that to heart and saying, OK, if that’s truly the case, if that’s how the United States is going to treat its allies, they’re just going to look elsewhere.”

It could end up being “a generational turn away from the United States,” he said, “or at least will take a significant amount of energy and time to repair these relations.”

Erica L. Green contributed.

Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.

Michael Crowley covers the State Department and U.S. foreign policy for The Times. He has reported from nearly three dozen countries and often travels with the secretary of state.