Marco Rubio in Canada for G7 summit but not, he says, to push country to be US state

Marco Rubio has said he is not planning to discuss Donald Trump’s threat to “take over Canada” during a visit to Quebec, as Washington’s top diplomat arrives to the backdrop of a raging diplomatic crisis and trade war.

The US secretary of state is flying on Wednesday for a two-day summit with other foreign ministers from allied G7 countries at the river resort of La Malbaie, the first such gathering since Trump retook power with his “America first” agenda.

When asked en route by reporters about Trump’s repeated comments on making Canada the 51st US state, Rubio said Washington was working on a number of issues, including defence and Ukraine.

“We’re going to be focused in G7 on all of those things. That’s what the meeting is about,” he said. “It is not a meeting about how we’re going to take over Canada.”

The G7, which includes France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK, was set up to coordinate responses from powerful democracies on global issues. On the official agenda was Ukraine, Sudan and the Middle East, as well as the Indo-Pacific region, where China has been vying for influence.

Rubio says he wants the G7 to be “constructive” but Trump’s unpredictable foreign policy has left Washington’s longtime allies scrambling. European countries descended further into a tit-for-tat trade war with the US on Wednesday after Trump’s tariffs on all US steel and aluminium imports took effect.

Relations with Canada have reached a particular low, and Canada announced billions of dollars more in retaliatory tariffs on Wednesday.

Rubio will be arriving in a country that has united around opposition to Trump and his hyper-nationalist US ideology. At recent hockey matches with US teams, the US national anthem has been booed, while US-made bourbon whiskeys are being removed from shop shelves.

The outgoing prime minister, Justin Trudeau, whom Trump has mocked as a “governor”, has called the US tariffs “dumb” and gone on the offensive with a “Team Canada” approach to the southern threat.

The US state department has said that the secretary of state is heading to the G7 meeting to “advance President Trump’s ‘America first’ foreign policy agenda”. Trump, meanwhile, repeated on Tuesday his desire to annex Canada. “The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State,” he wrote online.