Vox.com journalist Zach Beauchamp, who has been living in Canada for the last several months, has found himself at a loss when it comes to understanding President Donald Trump's goals in his trade war with Canada.
In an interview conducted with colleague Sean Collins, Beauchamp says that most Canadians have no idea what Trump's end goal is with his attacks on America's largest trading partner, and he suspects that Trump himself may not have any goals other than being a general bully on the world stage.
He explains that while he once believed Trump was simply trolling Canada with his declaration that he wants it to become America's "51st state," he and most Canadians now believe he's completely serious about it.
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"It seems somewhere along the way, inside Trump’s head, this went from being a joke that he made to insult and bully somebody into a serious thing that he actually wanted, to the point where he began to link it explicitly to harmful policies," he says. "And now you have Trudeau saying — and this is the official line of the Canadian government as well — that Trump is trying to bully us into becoming part of the U.S."
Beauchamp then explains why it took him so long to really comprehend this.
"I just didn’t believe Trump would do that at first, because it’s so stupid," he says. "It doesn’t make any sense. The United States, for all of its power, does not have the capacity to force Canada to become part of America through economic coercion."
He then adds that "the only way it makes sense to me is to think of Trump as a mad king... who just starts ordering his subjects to do all sorts of crazy things that don’t make any sense in real life."