The US also demanded a veto over Canada's future trade agreements with third countries and a right of first refusal on critical mineral exports from Canada.
No Canadian negociator would ever agree to such terms which would sign away Canadian soveereignty.
Sometimes I think we are back in the Banana Wars era of American foreign policy.
My theory on Trump has always been that he THINKS he can return the USA to that sorta supposedly grand era, BUT thinks he's found a way to legitimize it by using freely-entered(at least legally speaking) negotiations rather than military aggression.
As someone who believes that soft-power is an indispensable part of any long-term imperialist agenda, I will say that Trump REALLY doesn't know how to play that card at all. The closest I've seen to anyone in his admin demonstrating a feeling for local political culture in their annexationist rhetoric is Bessant saying something like "Albertans are a hard-working, entreprenurial people", which is totally boilerplate and doesn't actually address any precise issues that might be of concern to Albertans beyond the far-right fringe. And they have completely incinerated themselves with public sentiment everywhere else in Canada, with the PQ, an economically continentalist party previously jaunty about not letting the Trump bogeyman deter them from a referendum, now saying they won't hold one while Trump is in the White House.
...the PQ, an economically continentalist party previously jaunty about not letting the Trump bogeyman deter them from a referendum, [is] now saying they won't hold one while Trump is in the White House.
Not that I think grabbing Quebec would be in Trump or the USA's interests at all, in fact, it's probably the LAST province they'd wanna try and assimilate. But if you're seriously interested in annexing some of the more absorbable provinces, anything that weakens the unity of the overall nation is probably a good thing.
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My theory on Trump has always been that he THINKS he can return the USA to that sorta supposedly grand era, BUT thinks he's found a way to legitimize it by using freely-entered(at least legally speaking) negotiations rather than military aggression.
As someone who believes that soft-power is an indispensable part of any long-term imperialist agenda, I will say that Trump REALLY doesn't know how to play that card at all. The closest I've seen to anyone in his admin demonstrating a feeling for local political culture in their annexationist rhetoric is Bessant saying something like "Albertans are a hard-working, entreprenurial people", which is totally boilerplate and doesn't actually address any precise issues that might be of concern to Albertans beyond the far-right fringe. And they have completely incinerated themselves with public sentiment everywhere else in Canada, with the PQ, an economically continentalist party previously jaunty about not letting the Trump bogeyman deter them from a referendum, now saying they won't hold one while Trump is in the White House.
Not that I think grabbing Quebec would be in Trump or the USA's interests at all, in fact, it's probably the LAST province they'd wanna try and assimilate. But if you're seriously interested in annexing some of the more absorbable provinces, anything that weakens the unity of the overall nation is probably a good thing.