Canada's outgoing President Justin Trudeau has responded to US President-Elect Donald Trump's remarks about merging the US with Canada, stating "that is not going to happen."
He said the President-Elect's statements were an attempt to distract the Americans from the costs they would face as a result of steep tariffs on Canadian goods.
"What I think is happening in this is President Trump, who’s a very skilful negotiator, is getting people to be somewhat distracted by that conversation, to take away from the conversation around 25 per cent tariffs on oil and gas, and electricity and steel and aluminium and lumber and concrete and everything the American consumers buy from Canada is suddenly going to get a lot more expensive if he moves forward on these tariffs. That’s something that I think we need to be focusing on a little bit more," Trudeau said.
This was the Canadian Prime Minister's first interview after stepping down as the leader of the Liberal Party. To Trump's taunts about Canada becoming the 51 state of the US, Trudeau had earlier reacted that there was not a "snowball’s chance in hell" that Canada would become part of the US.
He also warned that Ottawa would impose countermeasures if Trump made good on this threat. Recalling the 2018 trade dispute, Trudeau said Canada put tariffs on Heinz ketchup, playing cards, bourbon and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, "things that would hurt American workers".
"But we don’t want to do that because it drives up prices for Canadians and it harms our closest trading partner," he said.
Though Trudeau shared the venue with Trump, the Canadian Prime Minister said he did not interact with Trump.
However, Trudeau agreed with Trump's stance about border security and that his government’s recently-announced $1.3-billion border plan was "a clear win for President Trump."
Interestingly, Trudeau also sent firefighting resources to California to fight the wildfire in Los Angeles. Shared a video of a Canadian waterbomber dousing flames in Los Angeles County, Trudeau wrote: "Neighbours helping neighbors", referring to the British and American spellings for "neighbours".