Trump says Canada should become 51st state of US ‘if they want to be a part of Golden Dome for free’

“They want to be part of it, to which I said, ‘Why don’t you just join our country? You become 51, become the 51st state, and you get it for free,” he said. “So I don’t know if that made a big impact, but it does make a lot of sense … because they’re having a hard time up there in Canada now, because, as you know, with tariffs, everyone’s coming into our country.”

Trump’s obsession with annexing Canada

It was in December 2024, just days after he was elected as President of the US for the second time, that Trump first proposed that Canada consider becoming the 51st state of the US.

Trump made the comment in the context of the trade tariffs he had proposed to impose on Canada to reduce the bilateral trade deficit.

Justin Trudeau, who was the then Canadian Prime Minister, whom Trump called Governor Trudeau, vehemently rejected the demand, which the US continued to make in the following months. In May 2025, Trump had, however, ruled out sending the US military to annex Canada, saying, “I think we’re not going to ever get to that point. It could happen.”

Trump’s threats to annex Canada ultimately ended up helping the Labour Party, which was trailing in opinion polls, to win the Federal Elections in April 2025 as Trudeau’s successor, Mark Carney, made resisting the US president one of his key election promises.

Prime Minister Carney has emphatically said that his country would never join the US as its 51st state. Opinion polls also show that people of Canada are not amused by the prospect of their country becoming a part of the US.