President Donald Trump has issued a warning to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, suggesting Canada could be at risk if it proceeds with a foreign trade agreement.
This statement follows Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 20, where he criticized Trump’s contentious attempt to purchase Greenland.
Carney commented, “It seems that every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.”
“On Arctic sovereignty, we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark, and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland’s future.”
“Canada strongly opposes tariffs over Greenland and calls for focused talks to achieve our shared objectives of security and prosperity in the Arctic.”
“The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.”
He emphasized the need for ‘middle powers’ like Canada to ‘stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together’.
Recently, Carney met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and revealed they had settled on a trade deal that encompasses electric vehicles, according to the BBC.
Initially, Trump had deemed their agreement ‘a good thing’. However, he has now shifted his stance.
In a post on Truth Social dated January 24, Trump referred to the Prime Minister as ‘governor’ and asserted that Canada has no chance of successfully executing its promising trade arrangement with China.
“If Governor Carney thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken,” Trump posted.
“China will eat Canada alive, completely devour it, including the destruction of their businesses, social fabric, and general way of life.”
He further cautioned Canada, telling Carney: “If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff against all Canadian goods and products coming into the U.S.A. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
The trade agreement would allow Canada to reduce tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles while China would lower charges on Canadian agricultural goods.
The shift in Trump’s view may have been influenced by Carney’s remarks in Davos, which seemed to have unsettled the President, who responded by stating: “Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”
In his address, Carney also stated: “For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order.”
He explained that Canada had ‘joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability’ and this enabled it to ‘pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.’
Referring to the international rules-based order as ‘partially false that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient,’ and claiming ‘that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically’, he emphasized that Canada no longer wishes to participate in it.
He continued: “Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
“You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”