United States president-elect Donald Trump is doubling down on his plans to impose tariffs on Canada in his first news conference since the certification of his election win.

US President-elect Donald Trump set out some of the major policies he wants to implement over the next four years during a press conference held on January 7. While addressing Washington DC's future foreign policy and how he will tackle immigration, Mr Trump said he is planning to rename the Gulf of Mexico.

“The Texas economy is deeply connected with Mexico in particular, and also with Canada,” he said. “A lot of the business that Texas does with Canada, of course, comes through the oil side of things, where we import crude oil from Canada and refine it on the Gulf Coast.

Business leaders in Mexico say the incoming U.S. administration will enhance the appeal of their factories as an alternative to plants in China.

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday continued to threaten significant tariffs and said he would be willing to use "economic force," rather than military force, to join Canada and the United States together.

The US president-elect has repeated his desire for Canada to become an American state on Truth Social, after mocking the departing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Canada could fix its struggling economy by becoming the 51st state of the United States—at least that’s what Donald Trump believes. The US president, who has repeated this idea multiple times, says merging the two nations would save Canada from what he describes as its dire financial situation.