Since his re-election, Donald Trump has drawn plenty of attention for neo-annexationist propositions made on social media about the Panama Canal, Greenland and Canada — including in the hours following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation announcement. A day later, he threatened to use “economic force” to make Canada the 51st American state.

For a supposed anti-interventionist, it’s odd that Trump is enthusiastically embracing ideas from the era of intense American imperialism.

Maybe that’s what Trump is going for. Perhaps he is trying to revive the expansionist spirit of Theodore Roosevelt, William McKinley and James Polk.

Canadians who paid attention to their history lessons will sense some neo-Polkism in these designs — a “54-40 or fight” call for the 21st century.

Not surprisingly, Trump’s annexation propositions have been rebuked from the leaders of Panama, Greenland and Canada, some more forcefully than others. Canada’s response has been mild at best.

Outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the man Trump now routinely mocks as the governor of America’s 51st state, counter-posted a video from 2010 in which an avuncular Tom Brokaw explains Canada to Americans.

Trudeau and Canada’s cabinet ministers have also sought an audience with the president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to find away around Trump’s ruinous tariff threats, a far greater threat to Canada’s national interests than his annexation........

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