After President Trump imposed the invoices on Canada on Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made an excellent statement that was largely lost in the moment.
“The excuse it gives for these invoices today for Fentanyl is completely false, completely unjustified, completely false,” Mr Trudeau told the media in Ottawa.
“What he wants is to see a complete collapse of the Canadian economy, because this will make it easy for us to annex us,” he added.
This is the story of the way Mr Trudeau went from his thought that Mr Trump was joking when he referred to him as a “ruler” and Canada as a “51st state” in early December to publicly state that the closest ally of Canada and the neighbor was a strategy.
February calls
Mr Trump and Mr Trudeau spoke twice on February 3, once in the morning and again in the afternoon, as part of discussions about preventing invoices in Canadian exports.
But these calls in early February were not just about invoices.
The details of the talks between the two leaders and the subsequent discussions between the leading American and Canadian officials have not been fully reported and shared with the New York Times provided anonymity by four people with knowledge of their content. They did not want to be recognized publicly by discussing a sensitive issue.
In these calls, President Trump set a long list of complaints he had with the trade relationship between the two countries, including the protected dairy sector of Canada, the difficulty that US banks face in businesses in Canada and Canadian taxes that Mr Trump deemed more.
It also brought something much more fundamental.
He told Mr Trudeau that he did not believe that the treaty borders between the two countries was valid and that he wanted to review the boundaries. Did not provide further explanation.
The border treaty mentioned by Mr Trump mentioned was founded in 1908 and completed the international boundary between Canada, then a British domination and the United States.
Mr Trump also mentioned the revision of the exchange of lakes and rivers between the two nations, which is regulated by a number of conditions, an issue that expressed his interest in the past.
Canadian officials took Mr Trump’s comments seriously, mainly because he had already publicly stated that he wanted to bring Canada to his knees. At a press conference on January 7, before being inaugurated, Mr Trump, answering a question by a New York Times journalist on whether he was planning to use the military power to annex Canada, said he was planning to use “economic power”.
The White House did not respond to a request for comments.
During the second call on February 3, Mr Trudeau secured one month postponement of these invoices.
This week, US invoices came into force without a new suspension on Tuesday. Canada, in return, imposed its own invoices on US exports, plunging the two nations into a trade war. (On Thursday, Mr Trump granted a monthly suspension to most invoices in Canada.)
The flashes between Mr Trump and Mr Trudeau and Mr Trump’s offensive plans for Canada have become evident in recent months.
Toronto Star, a Canadian newspaper, said that Mr Trump reported the 1908 border treaty to the call in early February and other details from the discussion. And the Financial Times said there were discussions in the White House about the abolition of Canada from a critical alliance of intelligence between five nations, attributing them to a senior Trump consultant.
Doubling
But it was not just for the president to talk about the border and the waters with Mr Trudeau who disturbed the Canadian side.
The persistent reports of social media in Canada until the 51st state and Mr Trudeau, as his ruler had begun to tear both within the Canadian government and wider.
While Mr Trump’s observations could all be bad or a regular negotiation to press Canada into border concessions or security, the Canadian side no longer believes that this is the case.
And the realization that Trump’s administration was taking a closer and more aggressive look at the relationship, which he watched with these threats of attachment, sank during the next calls between top Trump officials and Canadian bonds.
Such a call was between Commerce Minister Howard Lutnick – who had not yet been confirmed by the Senate – and Canada’s Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc. The two men had regularly contacted the Mar-A-Lago, home and home of Mr Trump in Florida, during Mr Trudeau’s visit there in early December.
Mr Lutnick called Mr LeBlanc after leaders on February 3 and issued a devastating message, according to several people who were familiar with the call: Mr Trump, he said, realized that the relationship between the United States and Canada was governed by a series of agreements and conditions.
Mr Trump was interested in doing just that, Mr Lutnick said.
He wanted to remove Canada from a group sharing group known as the five eyes that also includes Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
He wanted to break the agreements and conventions of the big lakes between the two nations that have how they share and manage the Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario lakes.
And also examines military cooperation between the two countries, especially the North American Aerospace Defense Administration.
A spokesman for Mr Lutnick did not respond to a request for comments. A spokesman for Mr Leblanc refused to comment.
In subsequent communications between senior Canadian officials and Trump consultants, the list of issues has appeared again and again, making it difficult for the Canadian government to reject them.
The only nerve relaxation comes from Foreign Minister Marco Rubio, the four people who are familiar with the issue. Mr Rubio has avoided surrendering threats and recently rejected the idea that the United States is considering the dissolution of military cooperation.
But Canada’s politicians throughout the spectrum, and Canadian society in general, are worn and deeply worried. Employees do not see the threats of Trump’s administration as licenses. They see a new normal when it comes to the United States.
On Thursday, at a press conference, one journalist asked Mr Trudeau: “The Foreign Minister yesterday described you all this as a psychodrama. How would you characterize it?”
“Thursday,” Mr Trudeau was judged.
