DUBLIN — Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney continued his efforts to pivot away from the United States and align with Europe, meeting with the leader of Ireland on Saturday ahead of the Group of 7 summit and saying middle-power countries shouldn’t compete for favor with America.
Carney noted that Canada and the European Union have a combined population that is more than twice that of the United States, with a similarly sized economy and a collective defense budget that is twice that of China’s.
He said smaller nations can multiply their strength by partnering with like-minded allies.
“In a world of great power rivalry, middle powers have a choice — to compete for favor or to combine to create a third path with impact,” Carney said at Trinity College in Dublin.
He made similar comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which became a symbol of middle-power resistance in January, when he declared the global rules-based order over and condemned coercion by great powers on smaller countries, a sharp rebuke to the United States under President Trump.
Carney visited Micheal Martin, Ireland’s taoiseach — as its prime minister is known — earlier Saturday and French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday ahead of the G-7 summit of industrialized democracies that begins Monday in France.
President Trump leaves for the G-7 summit right after he hosts UFC fights at the White House on Sunday for his 80th birthday.
Trump is not scheduled to hold bilateral talks with Carney during the summit, according to a senior U.S. administration official.
Carney described Canada and Europe as a ”force for good — because we safeguard the values of human rights, dignity and pluralism that our people hold dear.”
The prime minister said that together, the EU and Canada are one of the largest economic, cultural, technological, financial and military blocs in the world.
“The new world order will be built starting with Europe,” Carney said at an earlier joint news conference with Martin. “Canada is the most European of non-European countries. We are transforming our cooperation with Europe.”
In February, Canada became the first non-European member of the SAFE mechanism, the European Union’s defense procurement initiative. Carney, on his ninth trip to Europe since become prime minister 15 months ago, noted that Canada has 56 partnerships in the critical minerals sector across more than 10 countries, primarily in Europe.
Despite his comments appearing to distance Canada from the United States, Carney also said the U.S. isn’t interested in big changes to the free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico.
“The U.S. has been clear. They don’t want to change the fundamental architecture,” Carney said.
There is a scheduled July 1 review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the latest iteration of the North American free-trade pact that has intertwined the economies of the continent’s three major countries since the early 1990s. Trump said this week that he may not renew the deal.
But Carney emphasized that the Trump administration has allowed about 85% of Canadian trade to the U.S. to be tariff-free because it is covered under USMCA.
He said that to fundamentally change the agreement, the White House would have to go to Congress, which he says it doesn’t want to do.
Trade tensions continue to simmer between the North American neighbors.
The U.S. official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House, said the U.S. has had outreach from Canada to set up further discussions on trade with the Trump administration.
The Trump administration views favorably a recent move by the Canadian government to roll back a regulatory decision that required foreign streaming platforms to allocate a portion of their Canadian revenues to fund local news and programming, the official added.
But, the official added, “no major breakthroughs” with Canada are expected during the G-7 summit.
Trump said again this week that the U.S. doesn’t need anything that Canada has. Carney has set a goal for Canada to double its non-U.S. exports in the next decade, saying Trump’s trade war is causing a chill in investment.
“Prime Minister Carney has spoken with great clarity and conviction about Canada’s desire to deepen its engagement with Europe,” Martin said. “Ireland warmly and unreservedly welcomes that ambition, and we will do what we can to strengthen relations between the European Union and Canada during our forthcoming presidency.”
Ireland will be holding the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union starting in July.
Gillies writes for the Associated Press.
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