Trudeau says he joked about a trade for Vermont or California when Trump raised annexing Canada

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that he mused over a trade for Vermont or California in response to President-elect Donald Trump signaling an interest in annexing Canada.

Trudeau recounted the exchange, which he said Trump "immediately" decided was no longer funny, when asked during an MSNBC interview whether the president-elect had previously discussed annexation with him.

"It actually sort of came up at one point and then we started musing back and forth about this," Trudeau told MSNBC's Jen Psaki of his visit with the president-elect at Mar-a-Lago in November. "And when I started to suggest, 'Well, maybe there could be a trade for Vermont or California for certain parts,' he immediately decided that it was not that funny anymore, and we moved on to a different conversation."

The full interview is set to air on "Inside with Jen Psaki" on Sunday at 12 p.m. ET.

Trudeau has repeatedly rejected Trump's musings about Canada becoming the 51st state, writing on X on Tuesday, “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States."

A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

Trudeau had made the trip to meet with Trump shortly after the president-elect threatened to impose a 25% tariff on Canadian goods.

Trump in November called his meeting with Trudeau at his Palm Beach club “very productive," saying they had discussed immigration and "the massive Trade Deficit the U.S. has with Canada.”

Trudeau said in the MSNBC interview that Canada is prepared to deliver a "robust response" if Trump goes forward with his tariff plan.

"My focus has to be not on something that he’s talking about that will not ever happen, but more on something that might well happen: That if he does choose to go forward with tariffs that raise the cost of just about everything for American citizens, that on top of that, we’re going to have to have a robust response to that," Trudeau told Psaki.

Trump has said that imposing blanket 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico,  a proposal he has framed as a response to the ongoing fentanyl crisis, would be among his first executive orders when he begins his second term later this month.

Trudeau said earlier this week that he would step down as the head of Canada's ruling Liberal Party amid intensifying calls for his resignation partly due to how he has handled threats from Trump. The abrupt resignation last month of Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who cited concerns over employing “costly political gimmicks” instead of battling the incoming tariff threat squarely, signaled Liberal Party dissatisfaction with Trudeau's approach.