The stereotype is that Canadians are kind, but they by and large do not take kindly to President Trump's idea of making Canada our 51st state. As of
April, two-thirds of Canadians considered the U.S. to be "unfriendly" or an "enemy," and 61% say they have started boycotting American companies. However, Canadian dislike and distrust of the U.S. is not new. Canadian views of the U.S. have trended down for decades, from a
high of 81% of Canadians holding favorable views of the U.S. under Clinton in the '90's, to hovering in the 50-60% range in the aughts, to only
24% favorable as of March. Meanwhile, 87% of Americans view Canada
favorably. There's a huge mismatch there.
So what's behind these decades of resentment? How does culture play into it? And what does it mean for our politics that our nations have fundamentally different ideas about our relationship to one another? Brittany discusses with
Scaachi Koul, senior writer at
Slate, and
Jon Parmenter, associate professor of history at Cornell.
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