Carney rolled his eyes at the characterization from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who told Fox News on Tuesday that Carney “was very aggressively walking back some of the unfortunate remarks he made at Davos.”
“To be absolutely clear, and I said this to the president, I meant what I said in Davos,” Carney said to reporters as he arrived for a Cabinet meeting in Ottawa.
The dispute centers on Carney’s remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, where he condemned economic coercion by great powers on smaller countries without mentioning Trump by name. The speech drew widespread praise and upstaged the president at the gathering. “The world has changed, Washington has changed. There is almost nothing normal in the U.S. now and that’s the truth,” Carney said in Parliament on Tuesday.
Carney said Trump called him Monday and the two spoke for a half hour. “I explained to him our arrangement with China. I explained to him what we’re doing — 12 new deals, four continents, in six months,” Carney said. “He was impressed.”
Bessent said Carney should stop trying to “push his own globalist agenda.” He added that “Of course, Canada depends on the U.S.” and noted that “There’s much more north-south trade than there could ever be east-west trade.”
Canada’s Trade Diversification
Carney has set a goal for Canada to double its non-U.S. exports in the next decade. The prime minister plans to travel to India, Australia and other countries in an effort to reduce dependence on the United States, which takes more than 75 percent of Canada’s exports.
Earlier this month, Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on Canadian goods if Canada pursued a comprehensive trade deal with Beijing. Carney has said Canada has no interest in a comprehensive trade deal with China, but rather made an agreement that cuts tariffs recently imposed on a few sectors.
Dominic LeBlanc, Canada’s minister responsible for Canada-U.S. trade, compared Canada’s recent trade deal with China to an agreement Trump made with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea last summer, in which the U.S. cut some tariffs on China while Beijing moved to allow rare earth exports and lift a pause on purchasing U.S. soy.
Territorial Claims and Arctic Tensions
Trump’s push to acquire Greenland has strained the NATO alliance and alarmed Canada, which shares a 3,000-kilometer maritime border with Greenland in the Arctic. Trump has also previously discussed making Canada the 51st state. He posted an altered image on social media last week showing a map of the United States that included Canada, Venezuela, Greenland and Cuba as part of its territory.
Carney said he also spoke with Trump about Ukraine, Venezuela and Arctic security in their phone call.
The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement is up for renewal this year.