WASHINGTON, Feb 10, (AP): US President Donald Trump said he is serious about wanting Canada to become the 51st state in an interview that aired Sunday during the Super Bowl preshow. "Yeah it is,” Trump told Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier when asked whether his talk of annexing Canada is "a real thing" - as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently warned.

"I think Canada would be much better off being the 51st state because we lose $200 billion a year with Canada. And I’m not going to let that happen," he said. "Why are we paying $200 billion a year, essentially a subsidy to Canada?” The US is not subsidizing Canada. The US buys products from the natural resource-rich nation, including commodities like oil.

While the trade gap in goods has ballooned in recent years to $72 billion in 2023, the deficit largely reflects America’s imports of Canadian energy. Trump has repeatedly suggested that Canada would be better off if it agreed to become the 51st US state - a prospect that is deeply unpopular among Canadians. Trudeau said Friday during a closed-door session with business and labor leaders that Trump’s talk of making Canada the 51st US state was "a real thing" and tied to desire for access to the country’s natural resources. "

Mr. Trump has it in mind that the easiest way to do it is absorbing our country and it is a real thing. In my conversations with him on ...,” Trudeau said, according to CBC, Canada's public broadcaster. "They’re very aware of our resources of what we have, and they very much want to be able to benefit from those." Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday as he traveled to the Super Bowl game in New Orleans, Trump continued to threaten a country that has long been one of the US's closest allies.

He claimed that Canada is "not viable as a country” without US trade, and warned that the founding NATO member can no longer depend on the US for military protection. "You know, they don’t pay very much for military. And the reason they don’t pay much is they assume that we’re going to protect them," he said.

"That’s not an assumption they can make because - why are we protecting another country?" In the Fox interview, which was pre-taped this weekend in Florida, Trump also said that he has not seen enough action from Canada and Mexico to stave off the tariffs he has threatened to impose on the country's two largest trading partners once a 30-day extension is up.