Donald Trump is leaning into his joking suggestion that the United States annex Canada with a bizarre Truth Social meme.
Last week, Trump announced that he plans to impose a 25 percent, potentially trade war–inducing tariff on goods from top U.S. trading partners Mexico and Canada when he takes office in January.
On Friday, when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned Trump of the damage this would cause, the president-elect reportedly joked that “if Canada can’t survive without ripping off the U.S. to the tune of $100 billion a year, then maybe Canada should become the fifty-first state and Trudeau should become its governor.”
The joke has proven an understandably controversial one, but Trump on Tuesday afternoon followed up on it by posting an apparently AI-generated image to Truth Social captioned “Oh Canada!” The image depicts the president-elect atop a mountain, beside a Canadian flag, gazing upon a pinnacle that users have noted closely resembles that of the Matterhorn in Switzerland.
The post recalls some of the more delirious moments of Trump’s first term, namely his half-joking posts about the administration purchasing Greenland. It also offers a foretaste of the presidential communications that await us in his second term, thanks to the wonders of AI image generation.
But in this instance, behind the post and original joke, there lies a serious threat against our top trading partners, which analysts say would have dire consequences if fulfilled—even barring retaliatory actions.
NPR reports that Trump’s proposed tariffs would likely raise the cost of groceries and gasoline for American consumers. The Brookings Institute additionally notes that the tariffs could be even more ruinous considering “approximately 50% of U.S. trade with Canada and Mexico is driven by supply chains” in which products cross borders repeatedly during their production.
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