President-elect Donald Trump speaks at AmericaFest on Dec. 22, in Phoenix.Rick Scuteri/The Associated Press

Jeff Mahon is director of geopolitical and international business advisory at consulting firm StrategyCorp and an executive-in-residence at the Canada West Foundation.

Donald Trump’s threat to use “economic force” to annex Canada has not only broken new ground in his call to make our country the United States’ 51st state, it also strikes deep at the heart of Canadian identity.

When combined with the effective use of economic coercion – in the form of a 25-per-cent tariff threat – to move the needle on a swath of Canadian policies tied to border security and fentanyl, the long-standing belief that Canada is a “trading nation” is at risk of passing into the realm of mythology, where stories are at once tied to reality yet divorced from it.

Like those fur-trading voyageurs who cut a deal with the devil to fly through the sky in a magical canoe to be with their sweethearts on New Year’s Eve, Canada’s proximity and preferential market access to the U.S. has been both a blessing and a curse.

Market access solved some challenges associated with Canada’s smaller market. It helped some sectors achieve economies of scale and promoted the development of the North American automotive supply chain. The path to the U.S. served as the economic........

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