Stay Away From Trump. Befriend Localities Worldwide
This is co-published with Zócalo Public Square. Photo by Ricardo Stuckert/PR via Wikimedia Common, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
No, Canada!
Please stop sending your top cabinet ministers to Mar-a-Lago. Give up on trying to make friends with Donald Trump and his incoming administration.
Because it won’t work. Trump will keep attacking Canada and Canadians, no matter how nice you are, no matter how many concessions you provide.
I, California, know this firsthand. Which is why, if you’re going to survive America’s fall into fascism, you should become friends with me.
Now that we’re both targets of the autocrat entering the White House—me threatened with (among other things) arrests of hundreds of local officials, and you with crippling tariffs—perhaps we can build an alliance based on just how much we have in common.
For starters, we each have a population of about 40 million. We both are blessed with uncommon natural beauty, and people who love hiking, biking, swimming, or skiing outdoors. You and I both devotedly diverse places that take pride in embracing immigrants. And when we speak English (along with so many other languages), we both do strange things to vowels that invite caricature.
Trump, in his perverse style, acknowledged our similarities when he called your prime minister “Governor” and suggested that you, the True North strong and free, might escape punishment if you become America’s “51st state.”
Take it from me: you don’t want to be a state in a country headed by this man. Whether you’re his largest province or his closest ally, he’ll lie about you and attack you. His false claims against Canada—that you’re fostering an “Invasion” of both “Illegal Aliens” and drugs across your border into the United States—are just the beginning. I’ve been wrongly accused by this self-described dictator of allowing millions of illegal votes in elections, permitting murder of newborn babies, and setting myself on fire.
Trump backs his lies with threats. If you don’t stop doing whatever he falsely accuses you of doing, he’ll make you feel pain. So, he likes to threaten to withhold money from my cities, block emergency aid, or send in the military to mass deport immigrant Californians and their children. You, by contrast, face the threat of a 25% tariff on all your goods, which could send your economy into recession.
In Trump’s first term, I learned that appeasement doesn’t work. Two governors and state representatives placated him when he tried to stop federal emergency assistance after my biggest fires. It didn’t help. He moved to block aid again after the next disaster and started calling my governor “Newscum.”
Please learn from California’s experience. If you spend billions on border enforcement in response to his tariff threat, you won’t buy yourself any peace. It won’t be long before he’s threatening tariffs again because of some imagined grievance.
Trump’s attacks already contributed to a political crisis and the resignation of your longtime prime minister, Justin Trudeau. The U.S. president-elect will never stop trying to divide your society and disrupt your politics. In fact, he’s already begun with the nomination of Project 2025 author Pete Hoekstra as his next ambassador to you. As the U.S. envoy to the Netherlands during the first Trump administration, Hoekstra used his embassy to hold a fundraiser for a far-right Dutch party.
How does Trump gain from his strategy of attacking allies? The best explanation came in the song “Blame Canada,” from 2004 movie comedy “Team America: World Police.”
We must blame them and cause a fuss
Before somebody thinks of blaming us!
Instead of playing Trump’s blame game, why don’t we two scapegoats team up?
Building on the mutual aid we’ve offered each other during natural disasters—thank you for being here during L.A.’s fires—we could develop a mutual assistance system in the face of the American government’s attacks. You might provide temporary havens for my immigrant families when Trump starts his mass deportations. (I also might need safe houses for my politicians, whom Trump has threatened to imprison for following state laws protecting immigrants.) In return, I would be more than happy to help you block, or find ways around, his punitive tariffs.
Our partnership won’t be entirely defensive. Trump’s ludicrous cabinet picks make plain he is going to abandon responsible governance in health, environment, consumer protection, and sustainable development. You and I can fill that void by building California-Canadian agencies and institutions in these areas.
This wouldn’t be new. California and Quebec have linked their respective cap-and-trade markets for carbon since 2014. Last June, my governor and your prime minister signed a Memorandum of Cooperation to fight climate change, conserve biodiversity, cut back plastic waste, and build more zero-emission vehicles.
Our partnership could easily expand. Neighbors Washington and Oregon should come on board. If we could convince Mexico and its new president to join up too—she’s a climate scientist who has been tough with Trump—we could declare ourselves the Free North America. Union. And we would have Trump surrounded on all three of his land borders, for whatever that’s worth. (Perhaps this is why he’s keen to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America).
If we’re lucky, this closer partnership might survive Trump and give you and me a better chance of meeting the 21st century’s many challenges. Let me assure you that our agreement would be non-exclusive. You could still stay in the British commonwealth, or even join the European Union, as the Economist recently suggested.
Because, as you and both I know, when you’re living next to a country governed by a madman, you can’t have too many friends.
