Trump’s plan for ‘hemispheric control’: Steve Bannon on why tariffs may only be the start – National

Sitting in the depths of Steve Bannon‘s chaotic War Room, Global News has an important question for the right-wing media mogul: How seriously should we be taking the president’s insistence that Canada should become the 51st state?

Very, apparently.

Bannon, a former top aide to U.S. President Donald Trump, says he knows exactly what’s going on. Dramatically shaking his rumpled grey hair, he tells me that we, Canadians, are “misreading the situation” before crossing his arms and launching into a spiel that he seems to have been waiting his whole life for — drawing from his experience serving in the navy, in the Pentagon and his master’s degree in national security studies.

He is unequivocal in his belief that Trump’s interest in Canada is strategic and geopolitical and that we’re missing the point by being fixated on tariffs and trolling.

“The world is now coming to Canada, and it’s coming in a big way,” Bannon says with a prophet’s conviction.

“You were isolated before. You’re not isolated now.”

That’s because, Bannon says, the Arctic is going to be the “new game of the 21st century” and a military weakness that he calls Canada’s “soft underbelly.”

Melting polar ice caps are making the far north more accessible to countries like Russia and China, meaning Canada has to do more to protect its vulnerable northern frontier — and, in turn, protect the U.S. And if Canada refuses, Bannon says, Trump will force us to. By annexing Greenland, retaking the Panama Canal and securing Canada’s northern border, Trump is apparently trying to establish a north-south economic and military corridor.

It’s all about “hemispheric control,” Bannon says.

Since asking Trump himself offers varying results, Global News sought out those with insight into how he thinks.

Even after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was offered a reprieve from a looming trade war, Trump continued to suggest Canada should just give up its sovereignty anyway. It’s clearly still on his mind.

So, all those jibes about “Governor Trudeau” and Canada as the “51st state”? Global News asks.

He’s not trolling, Bannon counters. He’s “really thought this through.”

“Let me be brutally frank. Geo-strategically, you don’t really have an option [but to join us] if you want your sovereignty because from the north, from the Arctic, it’s going to get encroached in a great power competition that you don’t have the ability to win.”

Bannon does not speak on behalf of the U.S. president. In fact, the two have a tangled history. Trump fired him from his role as White House chief strategist in 2018, after which Bannon went on to reinvent himself as the host of his War Room podcast and as one of the top evangelists of the MAGA movement.

But this populist and nationalist MAGA school of thought is closely aligned with Trump’s thinking — and it considers Trump its leader. The White House’s recent torrent of executive orders — cutting down on federal bureaucracy, waging a war on immigration and promoting economic nationalism — reflect Bannon’s guiding principles.

When we visit the War Room, a new intern (the granddaughter of his assistant of 40 years) has arrived to replace six producers who, he says, are all going to work for the new Trump administration.

As Bannon continues laying out Trump’s grand plan, he doesn’t attempt to conceal his pride that his underlings are going to work for his former boss.

“This is a major geostrategic job … Look at your northern border. You’re totally, completely exposed … it used to be your greatest defence. Now it’s your biggest vulnerability,” Bannon says.

Canada itself has long recognized the problem: Leaders have called beefing up security in the Arctic as the “most urgent and important task” facing the Canadian Forces amid a changing geopolitical and physical landscape, thanks to climate change. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, too, has called for a joint Canada-U.S. NORAD base in Northern Canada to bolster Arctic security.

Both Trump detractors and disciples can see the rationale behind Trump’s supposed continental aspirations.

“It’s not a joke,” says Elliott Abrams, the longtime State Department official and Trump, Bush and Reagan administration veteran.

“Security experts here are talking a lot more about the Arctic than they were 10 years ago. That is the kind of thing that can be resolved by saying, ‘We have common interests, we’re going to work together closely … there is an escape hatch from this.’”

Bannon’s War Room occupies the first floor of a stately red brick semi-detached near Capitol Hill in central Washington D.C., in the shadow of the Supreme Court of the United States. It seems an ironic location for Bannon’s command post, surrounded by the very institutions his anti-establishment, populist and nationalist movement rails against.

Even Trump is considered “a moderate” figure in the movement these days, Bannon says, compared to right-wing compatriots like himself, a convicted felon currently awaiting trial on charges that he duped donors who have money to build a wall along the southern U.S. border. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

“We’re the furthest right before you leave into the fever swamps,” he says.

Bannon also oversaw the Breitbart News website — a voice for the alt-right movement ranging from white supremacists, neo-Nazis and anti-Semites — before joining the 2016 Trump campaign. He’s been vocal of his frustrations and distrust of the “mainstream media.”

“We just had a sweeping victory and nobody can define populism here … the media looks at us as exotic animals in a zoo.”

There’s no doubt he’s an influential figure, but his enduring influence on the U.S. president is unclear. When asked how often he speaks to his former boss, he says, “Don’t you worry about that,” before conceding he has interviewed Trump only once in five years. When asked why so seldom, he says: “I don’t need to interview him.”

They do seemingly share a playbook, however. Trump’s unrelenting flow of executive orders and initiatives in the early days of his administration was famously described by Bannon in 2018 as “Flood[ing] the zone with sh*t.” They’re both guided by the same populist, nationalist beliefs.

And he’s eager to share his insight. First, on tariffs and why “Canada is getting it all wrong.”

“This isn’t a punitive tariff on a valve coming from Canada to Detroit. This is something very different,” Bannon says from behind a table with a podcast mic angled towards him, his lower half obscured behind a stack of paper and books.

A life-sized photograph of Bannon, surveying the horizon with a steely gaze, leans against a vast War Room flag, facing the space at a cluttered table where Bannon himself sits, wearing his real-life steely gaze. Behind him, placards of his quotes — “There are no conspiracies, but there are no coincidences” — and religious paraphernalia jostle for space.

“[Trump’s] saying, ‘Hey, America is the best market in the world, it’s a golden door. If you want to come in here, either ship your business here to manufacture, or you’re going to pay a big total tax. But if you’re inside the golden door, there’s no tariff.’”

But, from Bannon’s perspective, it remains unclear whether those tariffs are a tool of economic force being exerted over Canada to bend to Trump’s Arctic empire-building exercise or if it’s a way for Canada to buy into the protection the U.S. will offer from encroachments.

That is at its core, he says, behind several of Trump’s current obsessions. Having control over the Panama Canal means shipping routes are secured from the south. Building an “Iron Dome” — the U.S.-funded air defence system in Israel, which borrows, in part, from the Reagan administration’s ill-fated “Star Wars” initiative — secures the skies.

Annexing Greenland means a U.S. submarine base can be built to block the Russian navy from its bases in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. Then, the Northwest Passage — a network of waterways that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago — “changes the economics of trade with Asia, with Japan and East Asia and with that part of Russia,” Bannon says.

Renegotiating the CUSMA could make Mexico, the United States and Canada “one super economic entity.”

“And in that regard, that’s a game changer for Canada. President Trump gets a partnership with Greenland, secures the Panama Canal, and makes sure that they’re robust democracies like Bolsonaro in Brazil and Milei in Argentina. Then we’ve almost completed hemispheric defence.”

And, experts say, he has a point.

Abrams is not in Trump’s inner circle. But he has held senior positions in three Republican administrations — Reagan, Bush and Trump. It was a controversial run; Abrams was reportedly up for Trump’s deputy secretary of state role but was denied for criticizing him. He was also convicted for lying to Congress over the Iran-Contra affair in the late 1980s.

These days, Abrams can be found at the Washington-based think-tank and deep establishment group, the Council on Foreign Relations, where he speaks to Global News.

Abrams is skeptical that Trump has a well-considered grand plan, the way Bannon believes. But he can see why the Arctic would be a big priority for the U.S. president.

“We are not going to be invaded by Russia. You might be,” he said, referring to Canada. “So how is it possible that you spend a smaller amount in the region?”

Canada’s federal government announced late last year that it was committing $34.7 million up front and $7 million ongoing over a total of five years to a new Arctic policy. That pales in comparison to Denmark’s recent pledge of $2B and a 2016 pledge from the U.S. for $5.2B.

Abrams questions why no one has been tapped to oversee Trump’s Iran policy, which may signal shifting priorities. He doesn’t know where all this is going but cautions Canada from disregarding Trump’s threats — tariffs or a play for its sovereignty — out of hand.

“I would not take the view that it’s nothing, that it’s all smoke and mirrors … because that outcome would be a defeat for him.

“Trump’s got to have something.”

And as is often the case with Trump, his demands are shorthand for something else.

The U.S. president’s social media posts give a glimpse into his list of wants beyond what he’s saying out loud. On Sunday, he said billions were being spent to “subsidize Canada” and that “Canada should become our cherished 51st state.” That subsidy appears to be referencing the reported trade deficit of about $60 billion (not $250B as Trump repeatedly asserts).

A day later, he led a tweet about speaking with Trudeau, with incredulity, that “Canada doesn’t even allow U.S. banks to open or do business there,” before referencing fentanyl again.

Canadian officials have repeatedly said less than one per cent of fentanyl entering the U.S. comes from Canada.

But this scattershot approach is anything but improvised, says a former influential figure on foreign policy in the first Trump administration, who asked not to be named as he is advising this administration. Because, he says, Trump’s new foreign policy is incredibly well thought-out.

 

Trump’s 2016 foreign policy team was “inexperienced and very ill-prepared on foreign policy,” the influential official says. He’d focused on North Korea and Iran and “made a lot of mistakes.”

“This foreign policy is very, very different. It’s much broader and more sophisticated. There’s been substantial planning by his people and many think tanks, including ours,” the official said. But he does believe Canada has been “caught in the crosshairs” of Trump’s fixation on the southern border.

The official went on to reference Bannon’s blitzkrieg strategy.

“[All his planning] has enabled him to lay out a lot of initiatives all at once, like flooding the zone with ideas because there’s been so much preparation and so much trial by error from the first administration.”

But if hemispheric defence is Trump’s grand aspiration, he is keeping those cards close to his chest. The official said he hadn’t “written any policy papers or talked to any Trump people about that.”

But, he admitted, Trump’s 51st state comments had “caught a lot of us off-guard.”

“But I don’t think either country wants this to go very far. I think that Trump might move on to other issues … and as he racks up some initial wins, even small ones, he’s going to use that as momentum to deal with bigger problems like the Middle East and the Ukraine war and dealing with China.”

But the trade disagreements are a major sticking point for Trump. Canada’s closed markets, such as supply management, are a long-held Trump irritant. The behemoth south of the border wants access to Canadian markets for all kinds of goods and services, namely telecoms and banking. 

“The U.S. has some genuine grievances with Canada. And while the border and fentanyl may be one of the issues …I’m not sure if those are the central issues,” says Christopher Hernandez-Roy, deputy director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

That extends to supply management, the digital services tax, the softwood lumber dispute and the bipartisan defence issue, among others.

“The Biden administration kind of tried to nudge Canada diplomatically, and the Trump administration is going to shock Canada into spending more on defence. It’s a question of making sure the Arctic is secure, making sure that NORAD modernization is on time and on budget. I’m sure they’re having conversations far beyond just fentanyl and migration across the border,” says Hernandez-Roy.

As for the tariffs, Hernandez-Roy says the move “makes no sense” because Canada is a bountiful source of critical minerals — critical for making semiconductors and in a range of defence applications, a market China had previously monopolized.

“It’s a self-defeating exercise if what you’re trying to do is make a fortress North America against China and Russia because Canada’s economy is intimately linked with that of the United States. And if you devastate that economy, which is export-dependent, Canada is going to have to look for other markets.

“And the only one that will win there is going to be China.”

But to the question of whether this punishment would push Canada toward China, Bannon has no coherent answer. It isn’t clear if that means they aren’t worried or haven’t thought about it.

He says Canada has “already been infiltrated by the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]” and that while “Canadians are well-meaning and nice and decent people, you have a hard time facing the hard issues.”

But, he wants to be clear: Trump thinks very favourably towards Canadians. He says it as if this might dull the blow of Canada’s current predicament.

“[Canada] is something we’ve talked about for years, at our first meeting. He holds Canada in very high esteem,” Bannon says.

“He’s always had a troubled relationship with Trudeau because, let me be blunt, you can quote me, he’s a punk. Yeah, he’s just a punk, and he’s much too close to the CCP.”

But he says the western provinces of Canada, and Danielle Smith, most notably, “really get it.” He says he met with many representatives from “Canada’s West,” and they were “all over different dinners I went to.”

He even had some around to the War Room, he says, but he won’t divulge who. But he does say they’re interested in partnering with the U.S. — even if the rest of the country is not.

“Before, strategically, you didn’t need the United States. They were nice to be an ally of — now you need us. It’s the only way to stop the great power competition, which you’re going to lose. Tell me how that’s going to play when Russia and China start making physical incursions into northern Canada … how are you guys going to respond? Are you going to lose northern Canada?

“Well, if you’re partners and/or part of the United States, you don’t have to worry about that because we’re not going to let that happen.”