By Jason Wang, Postdoctoral Fellow In his second inauguration address, United States President Trump began by declaring “the golden age of America begins right now” and closed with, “and our golden age has just begun.” Between these lines, he vowed to “tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.” Tying his trade policies to dubious claims about fentanyl trafficking and illegal immigration, Trump’s approach appears less about economic strategy and more about asserting dominance. Invoking the language of imperial expansion, he even proposed the idea of making Canada the “cherished 51st state.” Historians like American Richard White quickly drew parallels to the 19th-century Gilded Age when robber barons thrived, leaving social inequality in their wake. The celebrated Canada-U.S. friendship — further entrenched over the past three decades by the

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