51st State?

Although Trump consistently refers to Canadian annexation in terms of making the whole country a "51st state", it seems to me that there are obstacles nobody has mentioned in swallowing Canada whole. There are major differences in national policies on hot-button issues like gun control, universal medical care, and medically assisted suicide, as well as questions over the status of the French language -- if annexing Canada would create special circumstances for French in the US, wouldn't fairness demand the same treatment for Spanish?

As a practical matter, the US would also have to offer Canadians some major enticement that would overcome the reluctance or distaste of many individual Canadians to vote for annexation. One such would be to offer some form of dollar equity, equivalent to what the German Federal Republic offered the German Democratic Republic at the time of reunification:

The Deutsche Mark played an important role in the reunification of Germany. It was introduced as the official currency of East Germany in July 1990, replacing the East German mark (Mark der DDR), in preparation for unification on 3 October 1990. East German marks were exchanged for Deutsche Marks at a rate of 1:1 for the first M 4,000 and 2:1 for larger amounts.

Lately, one Canadian dollar has been worth about US$0.70. Offering dollar equity to Canadians has been mentioned as one inducement, possibly a necessary one, for annexation. No discussion so far has seriously mentioned the potential cost of this, much less ventured any specific draft proposal.

In the event of annexation, which medical and retirement system would prevail in Canada?

The American and Canadian governments provide many of the same types of services for people who have reached retirement age. However, Canada has a more generous retirement system.

The poverty rate for Canadians over age 65 was 4.7%, according to Canada’s latest census. That’s lower than any other age group in the country and half the poverty rate for U.S. citizens of the same age.

A major benefit for Canadians is the publicly funded universal healthcare system, which provides them with essential medical services throughout their lives, as well as in retirement. It has no co-pays or deductibles.

In contrast, Americans have no single-payer insurance unless they’re disabled or extremely low-income until they reach age 65, when they can qualify for Medicare.

Medicare doesn’t cover most vision, dental, or hearing care costs. About one in five Medicare recipients reported paying more than $2,000 in out-of-pocket expenses, according to a Commonwealth Fund study.

On the other hand, according to a 2024 Canadian poll,

[M]any are willing to journey southward in pursuit of timely health care, even if it means paying out of pocket.

The Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News found that 42 per cent of respondents would go to the United States and personally pay for more routine health care if needed. That is up 10 percentage points compared with January 2023.

And 38 per cent of respondents said they would travel to the U.S. and personally pay for emergency care (up nine points from a year ago).

. . . The Ipsos polling comes as provinces continue to struggle with shortages of family physicians, escalating wait times for surgeries and escalation of emergency room backlogs.

But leaving those issues aside, how coulld the US annex Canada consitutionally (at least on the US side), legally, and diplomatically?

Treaties are the tools the U.S. uses to take “nothing by conquest” after the Senate ratifies those treaties by a two-thirds majority.

In 1848, President Zachary Taylor proposed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to Congress to annex Mexican lands. Even though some wanted to take all of Mexico, Congress ratified the treaty.

In 1898, Congress passed House Joint Resolution 259. It ratified President William McKinley’s treaty of the annexation of Hawaii. Due to protest, petition and dissent, it took 60 years for Hawaii to become an official state in 1957.

. . . Trump’s calls for Canada to join the U.S. could only happen by drafting a treaty demonstrating that a process of cession, purchase or occupation is legal. Only then could Congress approve it, and only with a two-thirds majority of the Senate. Trump does not have two-thirds of the Senate.

With whom would such a treaty annexing Canada be made? A Canadian nation-state about to disappear? The British Commonwealth?

It's been suggested that it might be easier to annex individual provinces, in particular Alberta, although the extent of actual support there for either separation or joining the US is unclear.

A May 2020 poll by Northwest Research for the Western Standard found that 41% of respondents would support independence in a referendum, 50% would be opposed, and 9% weren't sure. Removing undecideds, 45% would support and 55% would be opposed. Respondents were also asked if they would support a referendum if "the federal government is unwilling to negotiate with Alberta on a new constitutional arrangement", 48% said yes, while 52% said no. Support for independence was higher outside of Alberta's two biggest cities, with Edmonton being the most opposed.

Based on the business-school analysis of Trump's negotiating style I looked at last week, we know that Trump tends to ask for the absolute maximum he might be able to get, but may be willing to settle for less -- for inistance, Alberta alone if he can't get the whole country.

But there would have to be circumstances far more exigent than we currently have to convince enough Albertans, much less Canadians as a whole, to go along with annexation, and there are major issues that nobody in either country has been willing to address seriously so far.

What's Going On In Canada?

I've continued to follow up on Justin Trudeau's March 4 remarks about Trump's "dumb" tariff threat, in large part because there's been so little long-form written analysis:

Speaking to reporters at a news conference on Parliament Hill, Trudeau said Trump is trying to prompt "a total collapse of the Canadian economy" because he thinks that will "make it easier to annex us," something the U.S. president has repeatedly said he wants to do.

But Trudeau said that will never happen because "when it comes to defending our great nation, there is no price we all aren't willing to pay."

Trudeau said Canada will not back down from a fight in the face of "completely bogus and completely unjustified" trade action that has the potential to ruin bilateral relations and prompt job losses, economic devastation and higher inflation on both sides of the border.

This stemmed from earlier exchanges between the two:

According to The New York Times, Trump told “Trudeau that he did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between the two countries was valid and that he wants to revise the boundary.” He also mentioned revisiting long-standing treaties between the U.S. and Canada regarding the sharing of lakes and rivers.

. . . Publicly, Trump wouldn’t let the matter die. In an interview broadcast before the Super Bowl, on February 9, Trump told Fox News’ Bret Baier his plans to annex Canada were a “real thing.” And to magnify Canada’s economic vulnerability, Trump told reporters that Canada was “not viable as a country” without U.S. trade.

The problem for Canada is that Trump isn’t wrong on this front. Canada is so dependent on cross-border trade that if the U.S. were to turn the screws on The Great White North it could crater Canada’s economy.

There seems to be general agreement on this point, but again, there's almost no long-form written analysis -- just YouTubers posting opinions. A piece from a few days ago at the Council on Foreign Relations gives the establishment view with little insight:

[B]eneath Trump’s unconventional way of presenting his perspective lie nuggets of truth. The grievances with Canada that the president has articulated are hardly unprecedented or unfounded. During my tenure as U.S. trade representative in the Obama administration, I saw firsthand the many persistent trade irritants in the U.S.-Canada relationship, from Canada’s subsidization of softwood lumber to its protectionist dairy policies to other policies that target large U.S. firms.

. . . Being liked isn’t everything, and Canadians are condemned by geography to be forever tied to the United States, whether they like it or not. But it certainly seems like we should be able to solve our outstanding issues with the Canadians, of all people.

A couple thousand words in between, and that's what it concludes? We really oughta work things out? Sundance at Conservative Treehouse goes a little farther into causes, but I quote him only because there's so little else available:

Trudeau said if President Trump was to make the Canadian government pay reciprocal tariffs, open the USMCA trade agreements to force reciprocity, and/or balance economic relations on non-tariff issues, then Canada would collapse and cease to exist.

In essence, Canada cannot survive as a free and independent north American nation, without receiving all the one-way benefits from the U.S. economy. To wit, President Trump then said, if Canada cannot survive in a balanced rules environment, including putting together their own military and defenses (which it cannot), then Canada should become the 51st U.S state.

. . . The only way for Canada to be a sovereign nation unattached to the United States, is if they drop all of their climate-change initiatives, drop their liberal economic rules and regulations, begin a system of heavy industry production again and get back to using cheap energy production as the fuel to drive it.

Canada would then need to discontinue most social welfare programs and instead divert that money to their military budget.

This morning, he gamed out the impact of the tariff war:

Here’s how it will happen. CAD = Canadian Dollar, USD = U.S Dollar

President Trump hits Canada with an approximately 50% tariff. Let’s say an import widget from Canada costs the purchaser/importer $100 CAD + 50% tariff, now $150 CAD.

$1 CAD = 0.70¢ USD

Without U.S. tariff, it costs $70 USD to purchase the $100 CAD widget.

With the U.S tariff it would take $105 USD to purchase $150 Canadian widget

However, due to economic policy, Canada’s dependence on the USA market and the tariff battle, the Canadian currency drops around 30%. $1 CAD now equals 0.50¢ USD

With currency drop it now costs $50 USD to purchase the original $100 Canadian widget. $75 USD with tariff.

BEFORE: $70 USD without U.S. tariff, or AFTER: $75 USD with 50% U.S. tariff. A net change of $5.

But wait, back to Mark Carney’s plan. As stated in his tariff policy, the prime minister will take income from the Canadian side of the tariff equation (countervailing duties) to subsidize the impacted export sector. . . . All of this is done to retain access to USA consumers.

The final outcome, the U.S. purchaser is back to the original price of $70, only now that same outcome is evident with an invisible $50 tariff.

This is what Canada is now planning to do to retain access to the U.S. market while they look for alternatives.

What are the alternatives?

Prime Minister Carney outlined yesterday how he will increase the industrial carbon tax in order to align with U.K and EU trade partners on the issue of climate change. Taxing carbon, he says, is the key to unlocking excellent trade agreements with other ‘global trade partners’ who can then fill the void created by disconnecting Canada from the USA economy.

This is in line with Chrystia Freeland's idea of building a separate alliance with the UK and France as nuclear powers to balance the US. This is all nothing more than grandiose fantasy that solves nothing -- Canada, France, and the UK together would be litte more effective than Canada alone against the US, especially as none would seriously increase its military budget.

Maybe Trump has a point. But it's so strange that there's so little long-form analysis of these issues. If the only practical solution to the Canada question is to absorb it into the US, peope need to start seriously thinking about how this would be done.

So, What Was The Plan?

Trump's latest move in the simmering autopen scandal raises a big set of unanswered questions. As he put it,

President Trump dropping bombs on Sunday night... pic.twitter.com/YEfeHnWTv4

— Rantingly (@rantinglydotcom) March 17, 2025

His premise is that some group of people put some pardoning documents together without Biden's knowledge, and they signed them with the autopen. So, who were these people? For now, the media is being cagey:

One Biden White House source told The Post they suspect that a key aide to the then-president may have made unilateral determinations on what to auto-sign. The Post is not publishing that staffer’s name due to the lack of concrete evidence and refutations by other colleagues.

The Biden aide, who did not respond to requests for comment, would frequently make mention of what “the boss” wanted, the source said, but compatriots would have “no idea” if it was true because the internal culture was to not ask questions.

“I feared no one as much as I feared that [staffer]. To me, [the staffer] basically was the president,” the person said. “No one ever questioned [the staffer]. Period.”

“Everyone” was suspicious of this individual exceeding their authority when claiming to speak for the president, the source said. “But no one would actually say it.”

“I think [the aide] was using the autopen as standard and past protocol,” The Post’s informant said.

“There is no clarity on who actually approved what — POTUS or [the aide].”

A second Biden White House source agreed that the person was suspected of assuming the then-president’s positions and handing down orders without it being clear if they actually had communicated with the commander-in-chief.

In the weeks prior to Biden's withdrawal from the presidential race last July, there was an emerging consensus on who was actually running the country:

President Biden’s inner circle has gotten smaller following his disastrous debate last week — with his wife’s top aide Anthony Bernal emerging as one of the 81-year-old’s key advisers alongside longtime confidante [sic] Mike Donilon, four sources close to or inside the White House tell The Post.

Bernal, 51, is a divisive figure for allegedly bullying and sexually harassing colleagues — and his influence was likened by three sources to that held by the mystic Grigori Rasputin over the family and court of Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia.

. . . “Accurate and on point,” said a third source of the comparison to Rasputin, who was murdered in December 1916 by rivals who believed he was contributing to poor decision-making in the months before the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, in which the royal family was ultimately toppled and killed.

“Everyone has kept their heads down about Bernal and just tries to avoid him at all costs,” the third source said. “But everyone always predicted that this movie would end badly because of how he treats colleagues and always poisons the well for anyone else with the Bidens.

“He will go down with the ship but he’s also the one behind the wheel.”

One veteran Democratic aide went so far as to say “the country would be better off with Trump” than Biden if Bernal was helping run the government.

Oddly, the talk about Bernal ceased immediately when Biden announced his withdrawal on July 21. A web search shows several stories about Bernal and his influence on the Bidens during the spring and summer of last year, but nothing after July 21. So far, the official line has been that Speaker Emerita Pelosi drove Joe's decision:

Although Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Pelosi’s protégé, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, also told Biden about Democrats' concerns about him continuing his campaign, three sources told NBC News that any time the issue of his dropping out began to die down and lose momentum, they viewed Pelosi as the one fanning the flames.

Unlike Schumer and Jeffries, Pelosi is no longer on the Democratic leadership team and could afford to be more front and center in the effort to push Biden out after his disastrous debate performance last month.

“I think Pelosi continues to show she’s a master political tactician,” a House Democratic leadership aide said Sunday.

. . . In a private phone call a week after her MSNBC appearance, Pelosi warned Biden, 81 — someone she has known in Washington for more than 30 years — about the realities of the 2024 race: He could lose so badly to their mutual political foe, Republican Donald Trump, that he could damage Democrats down ballot and possibly cost them control of the House and the Senate.

How'd that work out? The master political tactician sees Biden's vulnerability, convinces him to withdraw -- and the race turns out pretty much as she thought it would have if Biden had stayed in. So who was running the country? What was the plan? Who allowed Anthony Bernal to set the agenda? Pelosi, the master tactician, the power behind the scenes?

It seems to me that Nancy Pelosi steered the Democrats to their current situation. She must certainly have known the full situation with Biden, but as far as I can see, the plan was simply to continue with how things were until things couldn't continue, at which point her plan was to keep going as though they could.

This autopen thing is going to get juicy.

That Which Didn't Kill Him Made Him Stronger

Here's something nobody's mentioned: in less than a year, for most of which he was out of office, Trump has defeated his main first-term adversaries. He beat Joe Biden so badly in the 2024 campaign that Biden had to withdraw before he was even nominated. But it was Nancy Pelosi, nominally out of leadership but clearly still in effective control, who pushed Biden out. Yet in doing this and endorsing Kamala Harris as his replacement, she left Biden and his allies embittered and damaged her own reputation when that whole new 2024 strategy proved a loser.

Now, by backing Jeffries and the failed House strategy over the continuing resolution and the shutdown threat, she's badly damaged Chuck Schumer's position as Senate Democrat leader, split the party, and put herself on the losing side of another issue with the battle cry, "Listen to the Women!" When the commentariat tsk-tsks over how the Democrats don't have a leader, they're talking about Pelosi.

As I noted yesterday, the 2025 confrontation over the continuing resolution and the government shutdown threat was a mirror image of the same episode in 2018, with a funding measure passing the House but facing a Senate filibuster. The same players then, Pelosi and Schumer, fought Trump and at that time forced him to a shutdown with an incomplete strategy. This time, Trump beat them. Here's a rare insightful take: Trump invented the shutdown vaccine: It turns out to be DOGE:

President Donald Trump appears to have found his leverage against congressional Democrats for the upcoming budget battles in the form of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Senate Democrats made an about face this week and supported a continuing resolution to keep the government funded at current levels until Sept. 30, despite its inclusion of $10 billion in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) funding and a $6 billion hike in defense spending.

. . . The turnaround came as Democrats voiced concerns over handing Trump too much power through a shutdown and as Elon Musk stoked fears that the government would simply permit a shutdown indefinitely to accomplish the goal of dramatically reducing the size of the government.

In other words, as long as Trump and Musk are around, any Democrat threat of forcing a shutdown is futile.

But this raises another question. We can say on one hand, boy, it sure was lucky that Trump hooked up with Musk on this DOGE business, huh? Where would we be if things hadn't fallen out that way? But that brings back the question that keeps coming up about Trump -- it's better to be lucky than good; Trump hasn't always been good, but he sure has been lucky, especially in the wake of the Butler business. But why is he so consistently lucky? I'm still struggling with an answer to that one.

Here's another question, the problem of the second-term curse:

The second-term curse is the perceived tendency of second terms of U.S. presidents to be less successful than their first terms.

According to the curse, the second terms of U.S. presidents have usually been plagued by a major scandal, policy inertia, some sort of catastrophe, or other problems. There have been twenty-one U.S. presidents who have served a second term, each of whom has faced difficulties attributed to the curse.

So far, Trump has on one hand articulated goals even more ambitious than in his first term, yet in at least the first weeks of his second term, he appears to have been more successful in achieving his second-term goals than he was in achieving his first-term goals in his first term -- a notable example is in the 2025 shutdown battle vs the 2018. Michael Goodwin has some insight here:

Compared to his first term, this is also a different Trump.

He has said the near-miss of the Pennsylvania shooter gives him a greater sense of gratitude and a belief in divine purpose.

He’s definitely calmer, more focused and less likely to get blown off course by criticism or resistance.

Also, his choice of a Cabinet and top aides are better reflections of him than his first-term team was.

. . . Then there’s the incomparable Elon Musk, who has turned the search for a more efficient government into an experience for the ages.

My view is that the four years where Trump was out of power made him better prepared to use that power effectively when he regained it.

This is the president he wanted to be.

I don't know if we'll ever get a good account of Trump's four years out of power, except to recognize that he was forced to fight political battles throughout that period, and unaccountably, he won every one that mattered. Something more than luck had to be involved. That which didn't kill him made him stronger.

Trump's Achievement

Thers's been little commentary anywhere on Trump's remarkable victories in both the House and Senate over the past week, culminating in Schumer's abject reversal on the continuing resolution, with nine Democrats and an Independent voting in favor of cloture and one Democrat and one Independent even voting in favor of the underlying CR. But Real Clear Politics had nothing on the story this morning, notwithstanding Schumer's reversal on the bill and cloture took place Thursday, which made the eventual outcome clear.

RCP's lead story, unbelievably, was Byron York on A reminder that Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate from two days earlier. And I noted yesterday that Politico had characterized the White House strategy for the CR as "over-confidence bordering on arrogance". Nobody saw this coming, and it looks as though almost nobody, despite two days notice, had begun to draft any sort of reaction. It isn't just legacy media that's lazy and complacent.

Exactly what did Trump accomplish?

Tensions between prominent Democrat leaders grew Friday, as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi rebuked Senate Leader Chuck Schumer for caving on the Republican continuing resolution (CR). At the same time, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries refused to comment on his future as a leader.

The striking remarks by Pelosi (D-CA) and the lack of response by Jeffries (D-NY) speak volumes about how disappointed they are with Schumer's actions. They also indicate that, like Schumer (D-NY) initially, they are strongly advocating for a government shutdown.

"America has experienced a Trump shutdown before — but this damaging legislation only makes matters worse. Democrats must not buy into this false choice. We must fight back for a better way. Listen to the women, For The People," Pelosi said in a statement.

The presumption is that, by contrast, Schumer did "buy into this false choice." It's also a shot at Schumer, implying that women in Congress are the true leaders on this matter.

Look at the difference between now and the last confrontation over a government shutdown in 2018-19:

The shutdown stemmed from an impasse over Trump's demand for $5.7 billion in federal funds for a U.S.–Mexico border wall. In December 2018, the Senate unanimously passed an appropriations bill without wall funding, and the bill appeared likely to be approved by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Trump. After Trump faced heavy criticism from some right-wing media outlets and pundits for appearing to back down on his campaign promise to "build the wall", he announced that he would not sign any appropriations bill that did not fund its construction. As a result, the House passed a stopgap bill with funding for the wall, but it was blocked in the Senate by the threat of a Democratic filibuster.

This led to an Oval Office meeting with Pelosi and Schumer on December 11:

For 17 awkward and tense minutes in the Oval Office on Tuesday, President Donald Trump and his Democratic adversaries — Pelosi, the expected incoming House speaker, and Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader — clashed in spectacular fashion, with the cameras rolling and shocked reporters watching. White House aides who had given Trump concise talking points were equally blindsided.

In the end, Trump handed Democrats what they consider a massive gift: a direct and unqualified admission — on live TV, no less — that he will be responsible for a government shutdown.

. . . The confrontation spoke volumes about the new power dynamics in Washington that come with the arrival of a House Democratic majority in January.

All three leaders — Trump, Pelosi and Schumer — looked uncomfortable at times during the exchange. Schumer and Pelosi frequently looked straight ahead, not making eye contact with the president as they disputed him. Vice President Mike Pence didn’t speak at all.

. . . Responding to Pelosi’s calls to end the open-press portion of the meeting, Trump hit back with a thinly veiled swipe at the leadership tumult within her caucus.

“I also know that Nancy is in a situation where it’s not easy for her to talk right now, and I understand that,” Trump said.

That set off Pelosi.

“Mr. President, please don’t characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats, who just won a big victory,” she said.

In his 2025 comeback, Trump has completely reversed the dynamic of the 2018 Oval Office meeting, dividing the Pelosi-Schumer united front and throwing Schumer's leadership position into question -- and although Pelosi is officially retired from leadership, the 2025 outcome is a blow to her remaining prestige. And in the 2025 confrontation, Schumer implicitly acknowledged that the Democrats would be responsible for a shutdown.

It's hard to avoid thinking that in his time out of office, Trump rethought this confrontation and recognized that a key resource was available to him in 2018 that he didn't use. As the Wikipedia link above puts it,

The Antideficiency Act prohibits federal departments or agencies from conducting non-essential operations without appropriations legislation in place. As a result, nine executive departments with around 800,000 employees had to shut down partially or in full, affecting about one-fourth of government activities and causing employees to be furloughed or required to work without being paid.

But the president is the one who determines what government operations are non-essential. Thus Trump had precisely the same resource available to him in 2018 as he had in 2025 -- if Schumer and Pelosi shut down the government then, the potential outcome could have been precisely what Trump threatened in 2025. You want to shut down the government? Go ahead, make my day!

Faced with a similar tactical situation, Trump appears to have had the opportunity to re-think the strengths and weaknesses of both sides and played the game with a completely different outcome -- and likely ended the careers of both Schumer and Pelosi.

So, Is Trump Trolling Canada?

President Trump: Canada can keep their national anthem when they become the 51st state pic.twitter.com/85aVHsRQ9v

— Rantingly (@rantinglydotcom) March 13, 2025

I tend to stay away from Victor Davis Hanson; I find his views just a little too pre-digested and several days behind what's actually going on, but the YouTube post below gives me a basis on which to make a different point:

At 4:29. he says,

We don't want Canada as a 51st state, and Trump knows that, and The Art of the Deal, trolling style, he knows that. Canada is a very left-wing country, socialized medicine, state-run industries. Its GDP is not as great as similar-size California, which also has 40 million people, but its per capita income average is about like Mississippi. I don't think it's as large as Mississippi's per capita income. But more importantly, if it was a state, if the whole country was a state, it would get two left-wing Senators and probably 50 left-wing House of Representatives.

But the headline of the same post is "THERE IS NO QUESTION CANADA IS DONE". Is this hyperbole? Do we really want a failed state on our northern border? Prof Hanson does offer a solution, assuming Canada is in fact a basket case, which is basically to rebuild its shipbuilding industry and reduce its tariffs on US goods. But will that really turn the country around? I haven't had the chance to ask him directly, but my experience of professors is that he won't have a good answer if I do.

Let's start with the professor's reading of Trump. His view of whether Trump actually wants Canada is a definite no. But the business-school analysis of Trump's style that I've been quoting for much of the past week points out that Trump relies heavily on ambiguity and uncertainty, delivered with bravado. Yesterday I linked a Politico piece that suggested the White House's position on the continuing resolution smacked of "over-confidence bordering on arrogance", but so far, it looks as though the White House's take has been absolutely spot on.

And let's recognize that in the week or so leading up to tonight's CR deadline, it looks as though the Democrats worked from the assumption that Johnson wouldn't be able to get enough Republicans in line to form a majority for the CR, the whole project would die in the House, and Schumer wouldn't have the dilemma he now faces. In this case, Trump's bravado helped to set up a situation where his opposition didn't take him seriously enough to work out a Plan B, and all of a sudden Trump's success came as a big surprise.

So I think it's dangerous to discount statements on how Canada can keep its national anthem when it becomes a state as just trolling. They're a recognized, and in fact highly successful, part of Trump's negotiating style.

But let's move to Prof Hanson's list of the specific disadvantages to Trump and the US if Canada should become a single state. It's a very liberal, even heavily socialized, country, and it would bring in two left-wing senators and maybe 50 left-wing House members. Canadians would be expecting their single-payer health plan to continue, and likely many other programs that would be unique to Canada, highly expensive, and a sudden new burden to the US federal budget.

On top of that, with only a few exceptions, the states that have entered the US after the 13 colonies have come in as basically unorganized frontier areas without pre-existing constitutions or legal systems, and their populations effectively grew de novo. The biggest exception up to now is Hawaii, which, however, became a US territory in 1900 as a result of US and European businessmen overthrowing the monarchy with the intent of fostering a US-style business environment -- and Hawaii only became a state after 60 years of US territorial administration.

It's worth noting that two US territories, the Philippines and Puerto Rico, became part of the US, but not states, at the same time as Hawaii and had existing constitutional and legal systems under Spain. The Philippines elected to become entirely independent, while Puerto Rico so far has not chosen to become a state. Again, the circumstances for Canada would have to be completely different.

How Canada would become a state would be via some procedure, and under specific circumstances, that nobody can easily predict right now, but would be completely unique. It would certainly be an obstacle that a certain amount of anti-Americanism has been part of the Canadian character, and as Prof Hanson suggests, Liberal politicians are using Trump's current bravado, taken as trolling, to inflame such passions in the runup to the coming election.

But if Trump is Trump -- or, if the necessary circumstances arise after he leaves office, but his successors continue with a Trumpian strategy -- the circumstances that would lead to Canada's admission to the Union would be those under which Canada would have few or no other options, just like the circumstances facing Sen Schumer over the CR. Such circumstances might involve collapse of the Canadian economy over tariff-related issues, which Prime Minister Trudeau has recently predicted.

They might involve a territorial incursion over some Arctic-related dispute, giving Canada no option but to allow the US military full rein to conduct its national defense under NATO Article 5. They might involve national bankruptcy over some issue other than tariffs, with the US electing to guarantee the Canadian national debt in return for statehood. In any such case, with a Trumpian conducting negotiations, Canada would simply have to have no other reasonable option.

But that would be the point -- it would be a situation where the US held the cards, and the US would be in a position to walk away if Canada didn't take the deal. On one hand, there are in fact plenty of conservative Canadians -- the various protests by truckers, religious people, and others during the COVID lockdowns give an indication of what an actual Canadian electorate working under US rules might look like. And if Canada had no other options, negotiations for entry into the Union could certainly include modifications or discontinuance of socialist policies and programs.

But then there's Hanson's other point -- why is Canada's per capita income little different from Mississippi's? Wouldn't policies oriented toward greater middle-class prosperity work to Canada's benefit? I wouldn't rule out the strength of this argument, either.

Given what we've been learning about Trump, I don't think he's trolling at all.

Schumer Shutdown?

For much of the past week, I've been looking at a business-school analysis of Trump's negotiating style as it's manifested in both his business and political careers, looking mainly at the issue of Canadian tariffs. But all of a sudden, we're getting a new case study, the House's passage of a continuing resolution, which needed only a simple majority, but now it's moved to the Senate, which needs a 60-vote supermajority to pass a procedural vote.

Trump had a bare majority of Republicans in the House, which he was able to control for the vote. But while he has 53 Republicans in the Senate, he doesn't have the 60-vote supermajority he needs.

Following Tuesday night’s vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced the lower chamber of Congress would recess until March 24, leaving Schumer with the option of accepting the House bill and keeping the federal lights on over the objection of progressive activists, or rejecting it and putting the nation’s capital on course for the 11th partial government shutdown since 1980.

In a statement after the lower chamber passed the funding bill, Johnson said it was “decision time for Senate Democrats: Cast a vote to keep the government open or be responsible for shutting it down.”

While Trump has so far left almost all the public statements on the negotiation to Speaker Johnson, the circumstances as they've developed have Trump's fingerprints all over them. First, as we've seen, Trump's preference is to negotiate with those who have few or no options. The House passed the continuing resolution and then promptly adjourned, with the members going home. Per The Hill,

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) sent the House home after the chamber passed the GOP six-month CR mostly along party lines on Tuesday. The House isn’t slated to be back until March 24, leaving Senate Democrats few options beyond eating the GOP’s stopgap measure or allowing the government to shut down.

Neither is palatable to them.

With the shutdown deadline Friday midnight, there's no practical opportunity to call the House back to try to modify the continuing resolution, so the Democrats have only two choices, keep the government open under its terms or shut it down. At the New York Post link above,

Before the Senate convened for Wednesday business, Democrats huddled during a caucus lunch to plot the next steps forward.

. . . “I’ve gone back and forth on this thing three times because it is two horrible choices,” Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) admitted to reporters before the lunch.

“If you shut down the government, the president is the person who decides what is essential,” Hickenlooper explained. “He decides what part of the government stays open, so you are actually giving him even more power.”

As the business-school analysis points out, "the importance of knowing one’s alternatives has received significant attention in the negotiation literature (e.g., Fisher, Ury, and Patton 1991), and Trump, during the 2016 presidential campaign, likewise advocated having a viable 'walk‐away' option (Trump 2016c)." In this case, as the Democrats acknowledge, Trump wins with either outcome, but he also has another benefit that he's known for exercising:

If his counterparts do have options, he uses threats to denigrate the value of these alternatives, thus presenting them with a structured choice: either accept his offer (which, as performer, he promotes with his typical bravado), or face his unpredictable ire (disrupter). Accepting Trump’s offer often puts the other parties in his debt, and he can be expected to threaten retribution if they do not reciprocate (disrupter).

According to The Hill at the link,

What also spooks members is the unknown of what comes after a shutdown starts. Trump is well known for being unpredictable, and how he handles a shutdown is giving Democrats heartburn.

A shutdown would put the Office of Management and Budget in charge of determining what personnel are considered essential and nonessential during its course. Senate Republicans could also hypothetically force vote after vote to reopen the government, giving them further headaches in the process.

“It’s the devil that we know against the devil that we don’t know,” Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said.

According to Politico,

Senate Democrats haven’t even surrendered yet on a government shutdown — but already White House officials are gloating about making them eat crow, almost taunting them to vote “no.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer threw down the gauntlet Wednesday, proclaiming that Republicans don’t have the 60 votes needed to keep the government open past Friday. But President Donald Trump and senior White House officials are increasingly confident Schumer will release enough centrists to put up the votes for passage, according to multiple White House officials I spoke to over the past 24 hours.

. . . In some ways, the White House’s posture smacks of over-confidence bordering on arrogance. During most face-offs like this — when an administration needs the votes of the opposition party for must-pass legislation — there’s typically some sort of outreach, even by the president himself.

Not so with Trump. Instead of extending an olive branch this week, the president used his Oval Office bilateral meeting with Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin to attack Schumer in vicious personal terms, saying he’s “no longer Jewish” and calling him a Palestinian.

And despite the fact that they need eight Senate Democrats to back this measure for passage, the White House hasn’t bothered to contact any so far.

Politico here seems to think this is something new or unusual, but the business-school analysis suggests that Trump is being consistent with strategies he's developed over his multiple careers. What's changed is that Trump now has Republican leadership in the House and Senate that he can work with. As Ed Kilgore put it in The Intelligencer,

Like most observers, I vacillate regularly as to whether House Speaker Mike Johnson is an unexpectedly shrewd legislative tactician or is instead Mr. Magoo, a bumbling backwoods pol who survives strictly by blind luck and subservience to Donald Trump. But as Congress moves this week toward a possible government shutdown, there are fresh signs that Johnson knows what he’s doing — or at least is listening to advisers or executive-branch paymasters who know what they are doing. He’s devising a trap for congressional Democrats that is leaving them irresolute and possibly more powerless than ever.

A big difference between Trump 2.0 and Trump 1.0 is that he no longer has to deal with Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, or Mitch McConnell. We still know very little about ju;st what Trump accomplished even when he was out of office.