When Donald Trump isn’t picking fights with Americans, he picks them with the leaders of democratic countries.    

At a November 30, 2024 dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s estate in Palm Beach, Florida, he told Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that Canada could become the 51st state of the United States.

Canada’s Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who attended the dinner, insisted that Trump was joking.

But on December 2, Trump threatened to impose a 25% tax on all products entering the United States from Canada and Mexico unless they stopped the flow of drugs and illegal aliens.

And on December 3, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform an AI-generated image of himself standing on a mountain with a Canadian flag beside him. Its caption: “Oh Canada!”  

Trudeau had requested the Mar-a-Lago meeting to convince Trump that the northern border is completely different from the southern one with Mexico. 

Canadian flag

“Less than one percent of migrants coming into the United States irregularly come from Canada and 0.2 percent of the fentanyl coming into the United States comes from Canada,” Trudeau said in Parliament. 

During the last fiscal year, American customs agents seized 43 pounds of fentanyl at the Canadian border, compared with 21,100 pounds at the Mexican border. 

Most of the fentanyl reaching the U.S. is made by Mexican drug cartels using precursor chemicals smuggled from Asia. 

Utterly unmentioned in Trump’s demand: It’s America’s insatiable demand for illicit drugs that is the root cause of the drug trade. 

Heroin syringe

Also unmentioned—if not deliberately ignored by Trump: Canada plays a substantial role as a U.S. trading partner. About 60% of U.S. crude oil imports are from Canada, and 85% of U.S. electricity imports as well.

Canada is also the largest foreign supplier of steel, aluminum and uranium to the U.S. and has 34 critical minerals and metals that the Pentagon eagerly desires. About 77% of Canada’s exports go to the U.S. 

Trudeau pleaded with Trump not to impose the tariff because because it would “kill” Canada’s economy. 

Trump responded: “So your country can’t survive unless it’s ripping off the US to the tune of $100 billion?”

His comments referred to the American trade deficit with Canada.

The U.S. had a $75 billion trade deficit with Canada in 2023 but a third of what Canada sells into the U.S. is energy exports and prices have been high.

Trudeau left the meeting without reassurance that Trump would not impose a 25% tariff on products  from Canada.

But on March 5, 2025, Trump slapped 25% tariffs on Canada. Six days later, Trump announced that he would impose an additional 25% tariff on all Canadian steel and aluminum imports effective March 12. 

Yet another country Trump has aimed his hostility at is Greenland. 

“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on December 23, 2024. 

The next day, Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede told Trump to back off: “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom.” 

The Kingdom of Denmark holds control of the semi-autonomous Greenland. 

Trump had previously floated the idea of the U.S. buying Greenland in 2019, which the Danish prime minister at the time called “absurd.” 

Greenland is home to America’s Pituffik Space Base which “detects and reports attack assessments of sea-launched and intercontinental ballistic missile threats in support of strategic missile warning and missile defense,” according to the base’s website.

Greenland is strategically significant to the United States because it sits between Russia and the eastern coast of the United States, and is the fastest way from Europe to New York. 

Some critics believe that Trump is floating headline-getting assaults on other nations to divert attention from his domestic agenda—which includes deporting millions of men, women and children from Hispanic countries.

Others believe it’s to divert attention from the recently released Epstein Files, which document his longtime ties to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein

In January, 2026, Danish military personnel were deployed to Greenland with instructions to prepare to disable key airport runways in Nuuk and Kangerlussuaq to prevent U.S. military aircraft from landing. Danish forces brought explosives and blood supplies in preparation for potential conflict. 

NATO had been created in 1949 to deter Soviet Union aggression against Europe. For the first time in its 77-year history, its European members prepared to repulse an invasion by the United States.

Trump’s actions faced heavy opposition in Congress from both major parties. Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson described Trump’s threats as “completely inappropriate.”

On January 21, 2026, Trump reversed course, first ruling out military force and then abandoning tariff threats after talks with NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte. 

And while Trump picks needless fights with America’s longtime allies, China—the first peer competitor that can challenge America economically, militarily, and technologically—is deepening its ties with Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other countries that seek to weaken U.S. power.