Trump has threatened Canada in all sorts of ways. What does he really want? [Video]

Donald Trump’s increasingly strident approach to relations with Canada is provoking fear about the potential consequences north of the border and questions about just how serious the U.S. president-elect actually is.  

While already threatening to cripple Canada’s economy by imposing tariffs on the day he returns to the White House, Trump ramped things up on Tuesday by telling a news conference he’s looking to use “economic force” to “get rid” of the border between the two countries. 

Trying to translate what Trump says into what he really means can be a fraught exercise.

But with four years of evidence from his first term of turning some of his words into actions, coupled with some hard economic facts about Canada-U.S. trade, it’s possible to draw a few educated conclusions. 

“It’s very hard to know when he’s serious about anything, but he does follow through with a lot of his most outrageous …