TORONTO — President Donald Trump on Wednesday took a shot at Canada and its prime minister, Mark Carney, saying the country “lives because of the United States,” a day after Carney declared, in a widely praised and blunt address, that a “rupture” in global relations had brought the U.S.-led international order to an end.
“Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way,” Trump said in an address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “They should be grateful also, but they’re not. I watched your prime minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful. … Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that Mark, the next time you make your statements.”
Speaking at the World Economic Forum Tuesday in Davos, Carney delivered a stark warning to Canada’s fellow “middle powers,” describing the onset of a rapidly developing new system in which powerful nations abandon diplomatic traditions in pursuit of their interests — a clear reference to the United States and the Trump administration, though he mentioned neither by name.
Carney said Canada and the world were at a turning point.
“Today, I’ll talk about the rupture in the world order, the end of a nice story and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints,” he said in French, according to Canada’s public broadcaster — though he said the world’s middle powers can build a new order embodied by shared values such as respect for human rights, “sovereignty and territorial integrity of states.”
Switching to English for the rest of his speech, which drew a standing ovation from the crowd, he said that those middle powers — nations that are not superpowers, but still wield significance on the international stage — must “live the truth” and “stop invoking rules-based international order as though it still functions as advertised.”
“Call it what it is — a system of intensifying great-power rivalry, where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion,” Carney said.
“Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” he said. “… Great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.”
The Canadian prime minister’s remarks come at a time when historically close U.S.-Canada ties have been upended by President Donald Trump since his return to office.
Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of annexing Canada, saying it “should be the 51st state.” Hours before Carney’s speech, Trump posted on social media digitally altered images that illustrated his expansionist designs, including one portraying a map in the Oval Office with the American flag covering Greenland, Canada and Venezuela.
Trump has also imposed steep tariffs on imports from Canada — one of the U.S.’s largest trade partners — in a move that analysts warned would only drive Canada closer to India and China.
Even before Carney’s speech, his administration had shown its capacity to evolve by strengthening other ties. Last week, he hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China that mutually eased some tariffs the two countries had imposed on each other, including on Chinese electric vehicles. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) blamed the deal on the Trump administration, calling it a “stark foreign policy failure with domestic economic consequences.”
Matthew Specter, a historian and senior fellow at the Institute of European Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, said “Carney’s speech rips the band-aid off the fraying liberal order but does so in a spirit that is stoic, not celebratory.”
In his remarks on Tuesday, Carney urged middle powers to band together, boost their own domestic economies for the sake of resilience and apply “the same standards to allies and rivals.”
“Middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” he said. “… In a world of great-power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: compete with each other for favor or to combine to create a third path with impact.”
“We know the old order is not coming back,” Carney said. “We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.”
The crowd burst into applause when Carney said Canada stood behind Greenland and Denmark, which Trump has repeatedly threatened to take over. On Saturday, Trump announced tariffs on countries that had recently sent troops to the Danish territory, dramatically escalating his effort to acquire it despite assertions that Greenland is not for sale.
“We stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark, and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland’s future,” Carney said Tuesday, adding that Canada is working with NATO allies to secure its northern and western flanks with aircraft, submarines and “boots on the ice.”
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