Trump sees the world through the lens of autarky. It’s like the man fell out of the 18th century. He thinks nations are these self-sufficient organisms living on the planet, competing for resources, etc. He thinks trade means dependency and weakness, rather than mutual benefit and specialization. The man has never had to share anything with anyone in his entire life; it’s not surprising he would have such a warped world view.

That is what he means by “Canada only works as a (US) state.” The US really could make a decent play at autarky. The US gets about 30% of its GDP from trade; Canada gets 70%. It’s foolish to try to do it overnight. But if the US wanted to make an attempt at autarky, and made the transition over decades? The US could pull that off. It would mean being poorer than we would be otherwise. We would have to accept more expensive and lower quality goods, but we could do it. The US has a large enough land area, population, and resource base that it could, on its own, maintain an industrial society completely from domestic resources.

Canada? It would have a much, much harder time at autarky. If both the US and Canada forever closed all their international borders tomorrow, Canada would end up a lot worse off than the US. Canada, as an island nation unto itself, would have a really hard time surviving.

Of course, there’s no damn reason that nations need to survive by autarky. They’re not independent islands. And we all grow richer by specialization and trade. But that fundamentally is not how Trump sees the world.

Yet the line south of Texas is inviolable, sacred, a proud bulwark…

It’s so perfect as a great and cherished state.

Wrong word, Donald. You mean “coveted.” You don’t cherish Canada, you covet it.

“We don’t need anything they have […]”

I say again, “okay, Dougie, blink the lights a bit.”

Shut down 4 red states for the weekend and see how it goes.

Each province should be a state! We will be come blue as a country and can have Medicare for all and high speed rail.