Trump Is Right to Denounce Canada’s Flirtation with European Union

The global media is buzzing this week over interest from both Canada and the European Union in making America’s northern neighbor the first “associate member” of the E.U. President Donald Trump has blasted the proposal as a “hostile act” – and he is exactly correct.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen first publicly proposed the idea during her State of the European Union Address on September 16, with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in attendance. “We share one ocean, one set of values, one way of seeing the world,” she said. “And we will now build our shared future as well.”

But according to an exclusive report from The Wall Street Journal, Carney may have been courting E.U. leaders ahead of time. “Carney has instructed his special envoy to Europe to scope out the most ambitious possibilities short of full membership in the E.U. or its common market,” the Journal reported on September 12, calling his efforts “a bold gambit to rewire the economic cabling of the Western alliance.”

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JUST IN: President Trump warns the EU allowing Canada to join as an associate member could be considered a “hostile act” toward the U.S.

7:41 PM · Sep 16, 2026

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Discussions have reached far beyond trade to include defense, technology, energy, and research, as well as potential new opportunities for young Canadians and Europeans to study and live across the Atlantic.

President Trump said that such an arrangement could be viewed as a “hostile act” against the United States and threatened “very serious tariffs” on Europe. Canada and the U.S. are notably engaged in a tense trade standoff – likely factoring into Carney’s sudden desire to seek closer ties with Europe.

As The Guardian has noted, there is currently no mechanism for making Canada – or any country – an official “associate member” of the E.U. Doing so would likely require amending the E.U. treaties, an exceedingly messy prospect given the need to navigate the competing interests of the body’s 27 member countries.

But that doesn’t mean Trump or the United States should ignore the proposal or what it signifies. The United States and Canada share the longest international border in the world, and most of it is unguarded. Canada’s relations with other nations by default have major implications for the United States.

In a bygone era, closer ties between Europe and Canada may have been nothing to worry about. But the reality is that both Europe and Canada are moving away from the shared cultural values which used to unite the West.

The E.U.’s open borders policies, for instance, have made the continent a hotbed for terrorism and jihadist extremism. Should Canada truly become an “associate member” of the E.U., anyone from the E.U. could in theory be free to travel to Canada should it be incorporated into the Schengen Area. That poses a massive national security risk for the United States.

Canada and the E.U. already have the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), which has applied provisionally since 2017. Canadian companies also gained access this year to the E.U.’s SAFE defense-procurement program.

Von der Leyen has described the next stage as an “Alliance for the Future,” with cooperation on advanced manufacturing, technology, defense-industrial integration, Arctic policy, energy, critical minerals, and artificial intelligence. Carney has also raised the prospect of Canadian participation in European programs such as Erasmus+, which could expand opportunities for Canadians and Europeans to study and live across the Atlantic.

Carney’s push toward Europe is rooted in Canada’s dependence on the American economy. About 70 percent of Canadian exports go to the United States, giving Washington enormous leverage when trade disputes arise. The collapse of Canada-U.S. trade talks last month, followed by another round of tariffs, has made that dependence a central political problem for Carney’s government.

Europe offers Canada new markets, while Canada offers Europe supplies it wants to secure outside Russia and China. The E.U. says two-way trade in goods and services with Canada reached €130 billion in 2025, nearly doubling since the provisional implementation of CETA.

But Canada cannot simply replace the United States with Europe. Geography, existing supply chains, and the scale of North American trade make that nearly impossible. Talk of “associate membership” appears primarily to be a gambit to give Canada more leverage when dealing with the United States.

The danger with this proposed alliance lies less in the ceremonial title than in the precedent it creates. The E.U.’s governing model is built on harmonization: shared rules for trade, travel, work, and security make it easier for member states to operate as one political and economic leviathan.

For example, the E.U.’s European Digital Identity Wallet, which member states must make available by the end of 2026, is designed to give citizens and residents an interoperable digital credential for accessing personal information and proving their identity across the bloc.

But as AMAC has previously warned, such a credential centralizes sensitive personal data and gives governments a tool that could later be expanded for surveillance or to punish political dissidents.

Associate membership would plant such impulses toward authoritarian centralized control in North America. The United States can no longer rely on Europe to share its commitment to privacy, free speech, and other pillars of liberal democracy. American leaders have a responsibility to guard against Europe’s assault on individual liberty gaining a stronger foothold on the continent.

Policies devised in Brussels have already turned the E.U. into a second-rate economic power devastated by mass waves of immigration and losing its cultural identity. President Trump is wise to view Canada’s incorporation into that disaster as a very serious threat against the United States.