President-elect Donald Trump has his eyes on Canada and keeps coming back to the idea of making it America’s 51st state—no matter how many times Canadians tell him there’s no chance it’ll happen.
If it were, it looks like the U.S. economy would benefit. Canada is a vast, resource-rich, and advanced Western economy. However, it also carries some fiscal issues, with high debt and a large deficit, not too dissimilar to the U.S. itself.
Moreover, it has an expensive social and welfare system, and free healthcare—things it would be reluctant to give up. So would Canada make the U.S. richer or poorer? Newsweek asked economists for their views. Here’s what they said.
Ken Kuttner: U.S.-Canada Trade Is Already Large
Obviously, the overall size of the economy (“GDP”) would be much larger if Canada became part of the U.S. This is just arithmetic. The question is whether per-capita income would increase or decrease.
It could increase if (a) …