Trudeau: Trump talk of annexing Canada a distraction, won't happen

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday he thinks President-elect Trump’s public musings about annexing the neighbor to the north is a distraction from Trump’s threat to impose steep tariffs on Canadian imports.

“What I think is happening in this is President Trump, who's a very skillful negotiator, is getting people to be somewhat distracted by that, by that conversation, away from the conversation around 25 percent tariffs on oil and gas and electricity and steel and aluminum and lumber and concrete,” Trudeau said in an interview on CNN’s “The Lead” with Jake Tapper.

“Everything the American consumers buy from Canada is suddenly going to get a lot more expensive if he moves forward on these tariffs,” Trudeau continued. “And that's something that I think we need to be focusing on a little bit more.

Trudeau said he’s not concerned that the U.S. would actually follow through with annexing Canada.

“That’s not going to happen,” Trudeau said. “Canadians are incredibly proud of being Canadian. One of the ways we define ourselves most easily is, well, we’re not American.”

“There is such a depth of pride that that's not actually an issue,” he added.

Trump has repeatedly mused about the idea of Canada becoming the 51st state and has taunted Trudeau by calling him “governor.”

Trump on Tuesday doubled down on his suggestion of merging the U.S. and Canada following Trudeau’s announcement that he would resign in the coming months. On Tuesday, he threatened “economic force” to annex Canada.

Trudeau said in the CNN interview that his resignation has nothing to do with Trump’s victory in the U.S. He said he worked well with Trump during his first term in office, pointing to the renegotiated United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade deal as a “win-win” for both countries.

Asked whether his decision to resign was related to Trump’s reelection, Trudeau said, “No. On the contrary, what we were able to do during the first, first presidency of Mr. Trump was work together in a very challenging situation, to come out with a very strong win-win in Canada-the US relations with the renegotiation of the USMCA.”

“Working together concretely is something that we've been able to do in the past, and I'm looking forward to continuing to work with him for the next two months while I'm still in office.” Trudeau added.