Manifest Destiny Includes Canada, Too
Sources
Gillies, Rob. Carney warned about economic coercion. Now Trump is testing the Canadian prime minister. AP. Aug. 23, 2026. https://apnews.com/article/canada-carney-trump-tariffs-economic-coercion-trade-a180ac85a70bbfb512ea59c224cb6c31
Wiseman, Paul. US and Canada fall deeper into a trade war with new tariffs as talks collapse and blame is spread. AP. August 22, 2026. https://apnews.com/article/canada-us-trade-tariffs-trump-857ef76b20a766e370d70176135b678e
Grantham-Philips, Wyatte. What to know about Trump’s 50% tariffs on Canadian goods that just went into effect. AP. August 22, 2026. https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariffs-canada-us-trade-war-293908564c7a381ea58a61db6e9a8517
Jamal, Urooba. Canada, US and tit-for-tat tariffs: How will they impact their economies? Al Jazeera. August 23, 2026. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/23/canada-us-and-tit-for-tat-tariffs-how-will-it-impact-their-economies
Canada and the American Revolution | Revolution Around the World. Museum of the American Revolution. Accessed August 24, 2026. https://www.amrevmuseum.org/canada-and-the-american-revolution-revolution-around-the-world
Anderson, Mark R. The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony [Excerpt]. January 14, 2014. https://www.amrevmuseum.org/read-the-revolution/the-battle-for-the-fourteenth-colony
Ripples of the Revolution: Arnold's March to Quebec [VIDEO]. Maine Historical Society. January 20, 2026. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMFqizdnUeM
Dunkerly, Bert. Canadian Invasion: The Occupation of Montreal. Emerging Revolutionary War. Dec. 29, 2025. https://emergingrevolutionarywar.org/2025/12/29/canadian-invasion-the-occupation-of-montreal/
American Civil War and Canada. The Canadian Encyclopedia. September 30, 2024. https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/american-civil-war
O'Brien, G. Patrick. America’s designs on annexing Canada have a long history − and record of political failures. The Conversation. March 3, 2025. https://theconversation.com/americas-designs-on-annexing-canada-have-a-long-history-and-record-of-political-failures-250229
Palen, Marc-William. Using Tariffs to Try to Turn Canada into American State Backfired in the Past. Time. Feb 6, 2025. https://time.com/7212675/tariffs-canada-american-state-backfired/
Herman, Lawrence L. Donald Trump, Benjamin Franklin, and the History of Annexation Threats. Policy Magazine. August 28, 2025. https://www.policymagazine.ca/donald-trump-benjamin-franklin-and-the-history-of-annexation-threats/
Transcript
Did you know that Benjamin Franklin was obsessed with annexing Canada? In between inventing things and traveling the world on behalf of the newly united colonies, he also really really wanted Canada to be the 14th colony. In fact, during the American Revolution, he was part of an envoy sent to occupied Montreal to try to convince the Canadians there to join the revolutionary cause. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Why has Canada been in the headlines? Well, last week, trade negotiations between Canada and the US stalled, with both countries walking away from the table saying the other one was being unreasonable. I don’t know about you but I can probably guess which party was being the most unreasonable of the two, just based on repeat behavior. Because the talks failed, a new 50% tariff has been slapped on a bunch of goods moving from Canada to the United States. Canada has pledged that it will retaliate by putting their own, dollar for dollar, tariff on certain goods moving from the US into Canada. Those tariffs will start September 8th.
This is a major deal because not many countries have been willing to stand up to Trump’s economic coercion which he is mainly wielding via these tariffs. And you might be thinking wait Leeja didn’t the Supreme Court recently say Trump couldn’t use tariffs, and now the US government has to pay out gobs and gobs of money to all the businesses who paid tariffs, ultimately giving those businesses a windfall because you know they passed all those costs on to us in the form of inflation that hasn’t gone down?? You are correct, but the Trump regime’s favorite game is whack a mole–if one law doesn’t work, just try the exact same thing and say it’s under your authority pursuant to a different law and wait for new lawsuits to roll in. Trump’s doing that here, claiming oh the thing the Supreme Court said I can’t do that doesn’t apply here but I have the authority to do THIS tariff under this obscure 1930s law that’s never been used since it was created almost 100 years ago, but we’ll get to that.
Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, is putting his money where his mouth is in this instance. Back in January, he made a notable speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland, I made a video about it at the time, in which he said that the United States is forcing a new world order, one in which the “middle powers” are going to have to band together in the face of bullying from a world power that is no longer friendly to them. It will take these middle powers standing up to this bully in order to maintain peace and the global economy. Basically, we need to plan for a future where the United States is no longer an ally, and the only way we can do that is by banding together. Now that’s not exactly what’s happening as Canada is standing alone in this tariff fight, but it is Carney being willing to stick his neck out to stand up to Trump’s bullying and say enough is enough. And he’s betting the Canadian people will have his back on this.
Polls are showing that they do. And this seems to be a common theme in US diplomatic relations, we talked about it in my video about US relations with Cuba last week, the United States seems to consistently underestimate how much people hate the United States and how much their negative, aggressive actions work to unify the countries they are attempting to bully. The same is happening in Canada today, where the new tariffs and Carney’s decision not to back down are both popular among Canadians who are furious with the US. Canadians have been actively boycotting US goods and choosing to buy local for months. Recently at soccer games they have been booing when the US national anthem is played. Recently, a petition to oust the Trump-friendly US ambassador to Canada received 250,000 signatures in a couple days.
And it’s an economic gamble that Carney has seen as worthwhile also because, as much as it will impact prices and drive businesses into bankruptcy, the tariffs also only cover about 5% of Canadian exports, so the pain will be less acute in comparison to the major symbolic victory this could give to Canada in standing up against Trump the bully on the global stage. And this will have ripple effects, potentially impacting how other countries choose to respond to Trump’s tariffs and sanctions. And because Trump and his goons truly are the ultimate bullies, these tariff negotiations didn’t just include tariffs, they also included certain restrictions on Canada’s ability to trade with other countries, and other questions about Canada’s language and cultural heritage that way overstepped the bounds of Canada’s sovereignty and led to a breakdown in the talks.
Not only is this massively important given that it could signal a change in how the world deals with America the bully, it’s also massively important because for the last few decades the United States and Canada have formed one of the closest economic relationships of any two countries on earth. They share thousands of miles of an undefended border that 330,000 people and $2 billion dollars worth of goods cross every single day. But because of the size disparity both in population–41 million people live in Canada, 330 million live in the US, and in economy, the US’s economy is about 10 times that of Canada–means there is a power imbalance. Fully 73% of ALL of Canada’s exports go to the United States. The next highest country for Canadian exports in the UK, with 6% of total Canadian exports going there. And so Carney has a gargantuan task ahead of him–finding alternative trade partners in countries with smaller economies, smaller markets, and further away than the US. Though if history has taught us anything, there is great benefit to diversifying economic dependence away from one imperialist world power that loves to flex its muscles just for the hell of it, just to watch smaller countries squirm.
And it turns out, one way the US has loved to flex its muscles to watch Canada squirm throughout all of its history is by threatening to annex Canada as a new state and threatening tariffs. Trump has simply taken those age-old tactics and turned them up to 11.
AD
Thank you to my partner on today’s video, PDS Debt! Credit card debt SUCKS–I’ve struggled with it, I know how stressful and overwhelming it can feel to watch those debts pile up. And it’s so hard to live your life under the constant strain of worrying about credit card debt, on top of, you know, literally EVERYTHING ELSE going on right now. And of course it is the credit companies that win when you have to keep paying them huge amounts of interest every month. It can feel SO good to finally take back control of your life by tackling those big scary debts, especially if you can get a little help along the way. If you’re struggling with credit cards, personal loans, collections, or medical bills, you need to check out PDS Debt. PDS debt provides a service to match you with debt solutions tailored to your financial situation and they have a team of people ready to help you with your debt journey. They understand your specific scenario and will help provide alternative solutions to becoming debt free PDS debt is offering a free debt analysis. It only takes thirty seconds. Head over to PDSdebt.com/miller to get your free debt assessment today. You’ll receive a full breakdown on how to save on interest each month and the quickest way to take care of your debt. There is no minimum credit score required. Whether your credit is bad or fair, they’re here to help you save more, pay off your debt faster, and start putting money back where it belongs—in your savings account. PDS Debt is A+ rated by the Better Business Bureau, boasts hundreds of 5-star reviews on Google, and holds a 5-star rating on Trustpilot. And getting started is easy! Go to P D S Debt dot com slash miller to complete your free debt assessment in just 30 seconds to see what options are available to you. Get your free assessment and find the best option for you right now at P D S Debt dot com slash miller. Thanks PDS Debt!
Canada & The American Revolution
Since even before the founding of the United States, European colonists in North America have been foaming at the mouth to add Canada as part of the union, and Canadians have been very aware and wary of that ambition. And that long dream became a greater possibility after the French and Indian war ended in 1763 and France ceded Canada to the British. Canada was now a British colony, just like the rest of them, and unification seemed imminent and obvious, especially as the original 13 colonies grew ever closer to rebellion. This, however, ignored the very important fact that just because Canada was a British colony in name did not mean that its colonists gained British sympathies or culture overnight. Most of the Europeans in Canada were still very French and also Very Catholic, which was an issue in the 13 colonies where anti-catholic bigotry was rampant and where they had just fought a years-long, very bloody war literally called The French and Indian War. (Though globally it was known as the Seven Years War). So the colonists weren’t feeling particularly warm and fuzzy about the French at that moment.
Tensions rose in the colonies and the whole Boston Tea Party thing happened in December of 1773. In 1774, in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party, the English parliament passed a series of laws, which the colonists called The Intolerable Acts, you may have a vague recollection of reading about them in your high school history class. One of these intolerable acts was called the Quebec Act. Among other things, the act restored elements of the French legal and land system in Quebec, expanded the territory of Quebec into the great lakes region and onto territory that the Ohio company claimed to own, leading to anger among colonial land speculators, a one George Washington being among them, and, importantly, the Quebec act guaranteed freedom of the practice of catholicism in Quebec. This was all too much for the 13 original colonies, and they considered the Quebec Act, along with the other intolerable acts, as violations of their national rights and their colonial charters and were, therefore, a threat to the liberty of the whole of British America. Canada was included in that estimation, and the colonists thought that adding Canada as a 14th colony would surely strengthen their hand against the British but also was a benevolent act of brotherly camaraderie to extend partnership to their equally oppressed brethren to the north. Or so they thought.
And so, when the Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in 1774, one of its first orders of business was in drafting an address to the inhabitants of Quebec, inviting them to become the 14th colony and participate in the next continental congress. But of course, true to its nature even before these United States were officially formed, the message also came with a threat based on the relative might of the American colonies. They said please join us, but also if you don’t, remember that quote “you are a small people” end quote and having the united colonies as a friend was a much better fate than having them as an enemy, threatening that any colony or province that doesn’t agree with the creation of the Continental Congress would be shunned from future trade or commerce. From its very infancy, the United States was using threats of annexation and economic sanctions to get what they wanted out of Canada. When the Articles of Confederation were drafted, Article 11 left the door open for Quebec to eventually join the confederacy.
During the American Revolution, about 20% of the white colonial population of Canada remained loyal to Great Britain. Much like we talked about last week in relation to Europeans in Cuba, the Europeans in Canada relied on Great Britain for protection and arms against the natives of the land they were attempting to colonize. The status quo was preferable to being left without the defences of a major imperialist power. And for much of the rest of the Canadians, they were generally neutral during the American Revolution. It was a far off war between other countries and they had their own daily issues to deal with. This was a glorious time before social media where they didn’t have to take in the daily horrors of the world and instead were mostly preoccupied with their own town and province.
That was, of course, until the Revolutionary army came literally knocking down their doors.
In the fall of 1775, General Richard Montgomery traveled from New York State with a regimen of the Continental Army, and captured Montreal, setting up a military occupation in the city of about 10,000 at the time. If they weren’t going to agree to peacefully join the colonists, they would be taken by force. Separately, a force led by Benedict Arnold, and this was before the whole part where he was a traitor to the revolution, Benedict Arnold was leading a regiment through the densely forested colony of Maine, intent on taking Quebec. He was leading 1100 soldiers on an expedition he erroneously predicted would take about 20 days and span about 180 miles. It ended up taking 45 days and over 300 miles. 300 of his men turned back about halfway through. Much of the river they were trying to travel by wasn’t navigable, leading to extensive portages wherein the men had to carry their 400 pound boats on their shoulders to the next passable part of the river. Their gear and food and gun powder got sopping wet. Many men got dysentery. They ran out of food and resorted to boiling their leather shoes and eating their wax candles to survive. Only 600 men of the original 1100 made it to the St. Lawrence River where they were able to rest and recuperate among the trading posts there before heading on to Quebec.
General Montgomery, having successfully set up the military occupation of Montreal, joined Benedict Arnold with more men and equipment, and together they stormed into Quebec, hoping to seize the city from the British and add it to the united colonies. The attack was an unmitigated failure. General Montgomery died in battle. Benedict Arnold was wounded. 400 men were taken prisoner.
The following April, 1776, a delegation from the Continental Congress arrived in the still-occupied Montreal. Among the delegation was Benjamin Franklin, attempting to fulfill his dream of adding Canada as a colony. By that point, the citizens of Montreal had grown weary of the American occupation. When the army attempted to rally troops to join the continental army, only 500 volunteered for the entire Canadian regiment. The economy was flailing, and word had spread of the disaster in Quebec. Canadians distrusted their American occupiers and had lost faith in their cause.
The delegation from the Continental Congress was unable to convince the Canadians to reject British rule and join the Revolution. A dejected Benjamin Franklin left in May, saying at the time that it would have been easier to purchase Canada than to invade it. Montreal was occupied until June 15, 1776, when British forces advanced on the city and the Americans finally fled. After the American Revolution ended, thousands of colonists still loyal to the British crown fled the newly liberated colonies and settled in Canada.
Canada & The American Civil War
At the start of the US Civil War, Canada was still a series of British colonies. Britain was officially neutral in the conflict, and so Canada was also officially neutral. Neither party was actually purely neutral, however. Most Canadians picked a side, with many Canadians identifying with the southern Confederacy, seeing them as rebels standing up to a distant, larger power that didn’t represent their interests. Some 50,000 Canadians actually enlisted and fought during the US Civil War, most of them fighting for the north. The Trent Affair in 1861 illustrates how neither Britain nor Canada ever was truly neutral. The Trent was a British ship traveling in international waters near Cuba. Union forces forcibly stopped the ship, removing 2 confederate rebels on board and taking them prisoner. Having felt their property and sovereignty was violated, Britain announced that it would declare war on the US if the men weren't released along with an apology from Abraham Lincoln himself. Britain even sent troops into Canada to prepare for war, though the men were later released, without the requested apology, and war was avoided.
Later in the civil war, it was the Confederacy that entered into Canada, attempting to set up a second front to attack the union from the north. They headquartered in Montreal and Toronto where they were able to organize raids to free confederate soldiers from prison camps and attack union ships on the great lakes. The most famous of these raids was the raid on St. Albans, Vermont, in October 1864, during which rebel confederate soldiers crossed the border from Montreal into Vermont, where they harassed and assaulted the townsfolk of St. Albans, robbed the town bank, and fled back into Canada. They were arrested there by a British soldier, but a Canadian judge ordered them to be released and even gave them back the money they stole. This outraged the Americans, who called on Lincoln to invade Canada in retaliation. After new trials were set and arrests were made, calls for invasion subsided.
But the threat of US invasion, of economic bullying, and of annexation, was ever-present in the minds of Canadians, who were well aware that they were in a precarious position, especially as numerous disparate, un-united colonies. It wasn’t just the Civil War that brought about the threat from the United States. Remember learning about that whole idea of Manifest Destiny? That it was the colonists' manifest destiny that they should eventually rule over and unite the entirety of the continent from sea to shining sea? Well that concept, that term Manifest Destiny, was coined by editor and columnist John O’Sullivan in 1845. At the time, he was writing of the necessity of annexing Texas and war with Mexico, but in the same article where he coined the term Manifest Destiny, he also wrote that it would naturally follow that not only would California become part of the glorious, god-ordained United States, but also Canada would naturally fall as part of the manifest destiny of the United States to control ALL of the content in of North America. Manifest Destiny always included Canada. So, after the American Civil war laid bare just how vulnerable Canada was to US aggression, the final straw came in 1866, when a group of hundreds of Irish Americans and civil war veterans, known as Fenians because of their relationship with the Republican revolutionaries fighting for an independent Ireland around the same period, also the name of Kneecaps latest album, these Fenians conducted what history called the Fenian Raids in 1866, during which they crossed the border into Canada, attempting to take Canada hostage from Great Britain and then trade its release in exchange for Ireland’s independence from Great Britain. The raids were an abject failure, but made all the more clear to Canadians the vulnerability they faced as a disjointed series of colonies. By 1867, Canada had declared its confederation.
After the American Civil War, many rebel confederate leaders, including former President Jefferson Davis, fled to Canada. The US ordered Great Britain to pay them back for the actions they took during the war that supported the confederate cause and caused the union damages. At one point, ever intent on finally seizing its neighbor to the north, the US attempted to negotiate with Great Britain that they would drop these war debts in exchange for taking Canada. Those negotiations fell through, and eventually it was agreed that Great Britain would pay off Canada for the damages incurred during the Fenian raids, which were technically the debt of the United States since they originated there. The Civil War settled, a newly united Canada moved forward into a new era, always keeping one eye on its imperialist southern neighbor.
McKinley Tariffs
By 1890, the United States still hadn’t given up the dream of Canadian annexation. The 1890s, the Gilded Age in America, happens to be one of Trump’s favorite eras. We compare him to Hitler and assume “Make America Great Again” means the 1950s, but in actuality Trump and his goons would be even happier with a United States closer to the one we had in the 1890s. Monopolies, oligarchs, tycoons, and bribery, at the highest level. Oh, and also, tariffs. Tariffs haven’t been this popular for over a century, but Trump has really brought them back. Tariffs were also really popular in the 1890s. And using tariffs as a form of economic coercion is not a new idea with Trump.
William McKinley, before he became president, was a member of the US House of Representatives known as the “Napoleon of Protection.” Tariffs are a form of protectionism, that is, attempting to protect US interests by restricting the importation of goods from abroad, thus creating favorable economic conditions for US businesses. At least, that’s the theory. McKinley, much like Trump, saw tariffs as an economic bargaining chip to get what you want. The McKinley Tariff of 1890 raised tariffs across the board to 50% and gave the president the authority to reinstate tariffs on a few tariff free goods, something he never did but was able to use as a threat to sign 10 different treaties forcing other countries to reduce their tariffs on US goods. And this was a blanket tariff law, one that applied to all countries equally, this included Canada, whose close economic relationship with the United States made them particularly vulnerable to tariff increases. While the McKinley Tariff was about economic protectionism generally, Republicans who supported the exceptionally high tariffs at the time also kept a special eye on Canada, a country they knew was particularly vulnerable. They hoped by squeezing them, the United States would force Canada to seriously consider annexation. By becoming the 45th state of the union, Canada would be able to avoid the tariffs altogether. And this wasn’t a secret, leaders the world over knew that the United States had designs to push Canada into annexation. Canadians knew it, too. As we’ve seen time and again, this economic aggression from the United States backfired, igniting a fierce nationalism in Canadians and pushing the country to create stronger trade ties with Great Britain, a country willing to give Canada preferential treatment in its trade policy. And some US manufacturers ended up simply moving to Canada to bypass the import tariffs. At the time, Canadian Minister of Trade and Commerce Mackenzie Bowell informed the Canadian Senate that, quote “The McKinley Bill, instead of destroying the trade of this country, has only diverted it from the United States to England. Our neighbors are cutting off their own noses to spite us.” The McKinley Tariff of 1890 was disastrously unpopular, losing Republicans the election in 1890, which occurred just one month after the tariffs were signed into law, and by 1892 the Senate, House, and Presidency were all under Democratic control.
The Smoot-Hawley Act
The Great Depression started with the market crash in 1929. Desperate to turn the economy around and against the advice of his economic advisers, President Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law in June, 1930. It was a protectionist tariff law meant to protect American industries from competition abroad and rebuild the crumbling economy. It raised tariffs substantially on over 20,000 imported goods. And it is widely used by economists today as a cautionary tale of how tariffs can backfire. Instead of increasing employment and manufacturing in the United States, the Smoot-Hawley tariff simply ignited a trade war, with countries around the world imposing retaliatory tariffs against the United States, dramatically deepening the depression in the US. Between 1929 and 1933, US imports decreased by 66% and exports decreased by 61%. Unemployment was at 8% when the Smoot-Hawley Tariff act was signed and by one year later it had jumped to 16%, reaching 25% by 1932. Of course not all of this can be directly attributed to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, but economists largely agree the tariff only made things worse.
Why is the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 relevant to current relations with Canada? Well buried inside the act is a little forgotten section called Section 338. That section delegates quite a bit of power to, you guessed it, the president of the United States. It says the president has the authority to retaliate against other countries, using tariffs, if those countries are discriminating against American commerce. The law caps these tariffs at 50% which is, what do ya know, the rate Trump went with against Canada. And section 338 technically remains good law today. But it has long been considered dormant, as it has never been used. Until now.
Remember how I said Trump’s favorite game is whack a mole? This is the new mole. The Supreme Court ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act or IEEPA doesn’t empower Trump to set across the board tariffs, and so he has to pay them back. But the court has never said anything about section 338 of the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. Because it’s never been used. So Trump and his goons who found this little known provision and decided to exploit it, are betting on this law and running with it. And Trump’s language has mirrored the language in section 338–he has blamed the Canadians for unfairly discriminating against US businesses, especially automobiles, alcohol, and dairy. This is of course another common tactic of international relations we’ve seen exploited by the United States since long before Trump–do something aggressive either economically or militarily–in this case Trump started this trade war with his across the board tariffs he announced early in his second term–and then when countries react in retaliation or self defense, claim that they started it all. So is Canada really discriminating against American businesses? Or is it reacting to an act of economic aggression by the United States and the US is using this as pretext to hit them even harder?
And lawsuits are sure to follow. I imagine a lawsuit against these new Canadian tariffs would relate to the idea that Trump is just claiming under section 338 that Canada is treating American businesses unfairly without any proof. It’s unclear what that means, how that should be proven, or whether Canada meets that standard, because again this law has never been used. But even though the lawsuits will surely flow in, Trump is the move fast and break things president and it gives him enough leverage in the immediate to try to turn up the heat on Canada. Now I don’t claim to know WHAT the fuck is going on in the twisted minds of the ghouls behind the scenes doing Trump’s dirty work, so maybe they genuinely think these new tariffs will push Canada into seriously considering annexation in order to avoid them like some lawmakers thought they would in response to the McKinley tariffs of 1890. But no one in their RIGHT mind could actually argue that Canada would ever seriously consider becoming the 51st US state because of some tariffs.
As is often the case, it is more likely that this latest act of economic aggression will backfire on the United States. As I’ve already said, in the face of continued aggression, Canadians are becoming more Canadian than ever, boycotting US goods, and banding together in the face of a common enemy. Nothing brings people together more than having the same enemy. According to reporting out of Canada, Canadians now see the United States as a greater threat to their security than Russia or China. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s approval rating now sits at around 60% as Canadians rally behind him standing up to the global bully. Reminder that Trump’s is around 35%. Every time the United States engages in acts of aggression against Canada, either through tariffs or threats of annexation, it is another PR opportunity for Carney to rally the Canadian people behind him. As Carney said at his press conference announcing the new tariffs on Saturday, “America is trying to break us so that they can own us. That will never, ever happen.”
To support my work, please consider joining on Patreon to get bonus content that didn’t make it into the video plus all these episodes completely ad free. Thank you to my multi-platinum patrons Christopher Cowan, Marc, Sarah Shelby, Art, David, L’etranger (Lukus), Thomas Johnson, and Tay. Your generosity makes this channel what it is, so thank you!
Be sure to check out my video from last week, doing a deep dive on US relations with Cuba.
