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Notes -
Interesting -- I do see your point. I think the status quo of Canadian relations/border control would have to get a lot worse before I'd see neutrality as an upgrade, but that's not impossible. The fundamental problem is that it's hard for me to imagine a neutral Canada as more or even equally resilient to Chinese infiltration/influence than a status-quo Canada, such that "a convincing guarantee that China will never be able to threaten the US from the North" is basically impossible unless Canada is in a military alliance with the US (i.e., NORAD). I can't really imagine a scenario where a neutral Canada doesn't become a diplomatic and intelligence battleground between the US and China (as well as Russia and India, among others).
Annexing Canada outright would probably be desirable in an abstract sense but is entirely unrealistic; a much-more-subservient or "puppet" Canada would definitely be good for the US though. Especially given their sometimes very strange foreign policy choices (too deferential to China when the US is their open enemy, weirdly hostile to India when the US is trying to bring them into alignment -- as an aside I think the bad relationship with India is an ironic consequence of importing such an enormous number of poorly-assimilated Indian immigrants, they are importing grievances and political fractiousness along with them). If, as you said in your previous comment, Canada essentially gave up its foreign policy to US control then that would be a great outcome for the US, although of course that seems very unlikely.
I do wonder if Trump is aiming for that sort of outcome, albeit in his particular incompetent and clumsy manner. Perhaps he thinks he can bring the Canadian government to heel and force them into a subservient position internationally, or force them to take action on their immigration/border control fiasco... but trying to do this through an "all stick, no carrot" approach seems like a terrible idea. Not least because he's making the Canadian conservative party less popular through association, and if they get another liberal government (which is only even on the table because of the backlash against Trump spilling into a backlash against the Canadian right, prior to this diplomatic clusterfuck the conservatives were pretty much locked in to win, afaik) it will make pretty much every US goal harder to achieve.
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