Maybe Trump doesn’t understand anything that happens north of New York. It’s clear that he’s never taken a civics class, in any case. Fox News is reporting now that, during last week’s meeting between president-elect Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump made an offhand comment suggesting “maybe Canada should become the 51st state.”

That was, of course, in response to Trudeau telling Trump that the proposed 25% tariff that the economic dunce announced for Canada and Mexico would “kill the Canadian economy.”

There has been no report that Trump suggested anything of the sort being said during his phone call with the President of Mexico. One presumes, however, that Trump has some sort of insane vision of annexing Canada and Mexico, and then building a wall around the entirety of North America.

After all, it’s drug trafficking and migration that Trump says the tariffs are intended to stop. Far more of a stick guy than a carrot guy, Trump believes that threatening the two countries with tariffs will make them suddenly able to solve a problem that the US itself, even during his first term as president, has never been able to solve on its own soil.

It’s a ludicrous solution. It’s a NON-solution, in fact, because it’s guaranteed to fail. The only reason that Trudeau complained the tariffs would kill the Canadian economy is because upwards of 75% of Canada’s exports go to the United States. And that’s only the case because of the trade deal that Trump signed four years ago which guaranteed the trade benefits the three North American countries currently enjoy.

But the real reason it will fail is because it will hurt America as well.

Tariffs don’t actually do anything to another country. All it would really mean is that Canada and Mexico would have to enter into trade agreements with other countries, possibly an even more powerful coalition of trading partners than the USMCA, in order to maintain their level of exports. Tariffs don’t make US-made products cheaper — they make foreign products more expensive for US consumers.

The US-Mexico-Canada Agreement that Trump negotiated and signed made it even more advantageous for Canada and Mexico to trade with the US than it was under NAFTA, the previous trade agreement. Many people called the new agreement a political defeat for the United States.

Regardless of one’s political view of the trade agreement, however, if Trump follows through with his threats, it will be a direct violation of the agreement, and would be seen as such by any country around the world.

That is to say, any country that the US wants to strike a deal with in the future — on trade or otherwise — would know that America will just renege on the agreement at the first opportunity if it thinks it can get even more out of the deal.

This country’s credibility will be globally erased if Trump follows through with the tariffs.

Some (Republicans) argue that tariffs will disincentivize buying cheap foreign products and make it more attractive to buy US-made goods. In reality, it means that either people will just stop buying the stuff that they’re able to get cheaply now, or they’ll have no idea why everything is suddenly so expensive — and they’ll blame Trump.

Peter Doocy, easily the most annoying of all White House correspondents for a major news channel, or at least the most annoying of the Doocys, went on Special Report with Bret Baier last night:

“We are told that when Trudeau told President-elect Trump that new tariffs would kill the Canadian economy, Trump joked to him that if Canada can’t survive without ripping off the U.S. the tune of one hundred billion dollars a year, then maybe Canada should become the 51st state and Trudeau could become its governor.”

I’m sure Peter was smiling while he said it.

In truth, this is as ridiculous a statement — and as horrifyingly insulting to a foreign leader — as that time Trump tried to buy Greenland. But it’s in Trump’s best interest to make suggestions like that, since the other talk of a “51st state” involves either Puerto Rico or Washington, D.C. Either of those additions to the Union would spell disaster for Republicans for the rest of time.

It is ironic, however, that Trump would use wording like that: “If Canada can’t survive without ripping off…”

That reminds me of what President Franklin Roosevelt said about American companies who were screwing over their workers way back when he was in office:

“It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”

Some presidents would get the irony here. Trump isn’t one of them.