On the eve of Canadians gearing up to vote in a federal election, Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed President Donald Trump’s previous comments about making Canada the “51st state.”
During an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, April 27, host Kristen Welker questioned Rubio on whether or not the State Department has “taken any steps to carry out” Trump’s plans “as he has said, to annex Canada.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“What the President said, and he has said this repeatedly, is he was told by the previous Prime Minister [Justin Trudeau] that Canada could not survive without unfair trade with the United States, at which point [Trump] asked, ‘Well, if you can’t survive as a nation without treating us unfairly in trade, then you should become a state,’” Rubio said.
Rubio’s comments come after a back-and-forth between Canada’s former Prime Minister Trudeau and Trump about how Canada should deal with the pressures felt by Trump’s tariffs. Canada has also countered with a 25% tariff on goods imported from the U.S.
Read More: These Are the U.S. Cities Most Vulnerable to Canadian Tariffs, a New Report Finds
Trump has repeatedly said both on social media and to reporters that Canada could become the 51st state of the U.S. When asked in the Oval Office by reporters if there was anything Trudeau could “give” to Trump amid ongoing tariff discussions, Trump reiterated that as a state, there would be no tariffs on the country.
“What I’d like to see; Canada become our 51st state,” Trump said. “If people wanted to play the game right, it would be 100% certain that it would become a state.”
Canada’s current Prime Minister Mark Carney has also spoken out on Trump’s persistent comments about annexing Canada. He said Trump raised the matter during a phone call in March. Speaking at a campaign press conference, Carney said: “To be clear, as I’ve said to anyone who’s raised this issue in private or in public, including the President, it will never happen.”
In an April 22 interview with TIME, Trump doubled down on his previous statements and said he was “really not trolling” about making Canada the 51st state, arguing that America doesn’t “need anything from Canada.”
“We’re taking care of their military. We’re taking care of every aspect of their lives, and we don’t need them to make cars for us. In fact, we don’t want them to make cars for us. We want to make our own cars. We don’t need their lumber. We don’t need their energy. We don’t need anything from Canada,” Trump said. “And I say the only way this thing really works is for Canada to become a state.”
Read More: Fact-Checking What Donald Trump Said in His ‘100 Days’ Interview With TIME
Trudeau—who stepped down in January as Canada’s Liberal Party leader—has previously told lawmakers and business leaders to take the threat of annexation seriously, with several outlets reporting that at a Canada-U.S. Economic Summit in Toronto in February, Trudeau suggested that Trump wants access to Canada’s critical minerals. “Mr Trump has it in mind that the easiest way to do it is absorbing our country and it is a real thing,” he said.
As mentioned, Rubio’s new comments land a day before Canada’s April 28 federal election, which could see a new leader in place for negotiations about tariffs with the United States. Trump’s comments have weighed heavily on the Canadian elections thus far, with the Liberal Party utilizing a Canadian wave of nationalism that has resulted from the ongoing trade concerns. The country’s next leader could decide the fate of Canada’s critical relationship with the U.S. and how that will look moving forward.
“They’re going to have a new leader. We’ll deal with a new leadership in Canada,” Rubio said. “There are many things to work cooperatively with Canada on, but we actually don’t like the way they treated us when it comes to trade, and the President has made that point when he responded to the previous Prime Minister.”
