After Canadian steel, aluminum, potash, energy and possibly cars, U.S. President Donald Trump may have a new target: Canada-related scholarship.

A top think-tank that studies Canada-U.S. relations now finds itself under threat in an executive order signed by the president last Friday.

Trump ordered a number of institutions gutted — eliminated to the greatest extent possible, reduced to their minimum legal functions.

That list includes the organization that oversees Voice of America, and, of particular relevance to Canada, the Wilson Center, which has institutes focused on Canada, Mexico, China and Russia.

Its Canada Institute is a longstanding destination of choice for Canadian newsmakers visiting Washington: It offers a venue for news conferences, and discussions, just over a block from the White House. 

Prime ministers, premiers, opposition politicians and civil servants have spoken at the Wilson Center's Canada Institute. It has also provided fellowships, including to the late Alberta premier Jim Prentice while he was working on his book about energy policy.

"This is definitely a shock to the system," said Laura Dawson, a Canada-U.S. trade expert who once led the institute.

"It's the only Canada-U.S. think-tank in the world. There's nothing else like it."

The organization is now scrambling to assess the implications of Trump's order; it must report on its plans to the White House by the end of this week.

It's not entirely clear what this means.

Trump's order calls on the organizations to reduce their activities to functions enshrined in law. Dawson says that could mean as little as maintaining its small museum, safeguarding some of Woodrow Wilson's presidential papers, and organizing 20 fellowships per year across the entire organization.

But the original 1968 law that created the centre doesn't mention its various institutes. In addition, the organization gets access to several floors in a federal building, plus almost one-third of its funding, $15 million USD, comes from the federal government.

The head of the Wilson Center released a letter Monday saying his team was crafting plans to comply with the order.

Call for donations

Mark Green, a former Republican congressman, is now president of the bipartisan think-tank, succeeding a Democrat.

He says the statute allows the Wilson Center to accept donations from individuals and institutions, and that donations are more important than ever.

Green called the outpouring of support following Trump's announcement gratifying.

"When Congress passed the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Act of 1968, it gave us a special charter and mandate to symbolize and strengthen 'the fruitful relation between the world of learning and the world of public affairs,'" he wrote in a letter to supporters. 

"As many of you have said in your outreach to us, that work — of scholarship-driven analysis and programming — has never been more important."

Dawson called it stunning that a country like Canada, so closely connected to the U.S., has only one think-tank with a full-time operation studying the bilateral relationship, and that it might now disappear.

"Canada is really at a loss in its ability to get its voice heard in Washington," she said. "The Canada Institute wasn't a lobbying organization. It it didn't pick sides and it didn't pick favourites. It just provided a venue, and a space in for Canadians and Americans to talk to each other."