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mark carney
Canada Has Concluded That Binding Itself to the US Isn't Safe; Here's Why That Matters
For those in Washington who assume the old alliances will endure regardless of how allies are treated, Canada's actions show the old order really is not coming back.
Feb 03, 2026
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum on January 20 was not an exercise in pique. It was the clearest articulation yet of a strategic shift that has profound implications—not just for US-Canada relations, but for the entire structure of American alliances worldwide.
Carney told the Davos audience that “the old order is not coming back” and that the rules-based international system was always “partially false.” The strongest exempted themselves when convenient, trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and Canada “placed the sign in the window” while avoiding the gaps between rhetoric and reality. That bargain, he declared, no longer works. Canada is now building what Carney called “strategic autonomy”—the capacity to feed itself, fuel itself, and defend itself without depending on the United States.
The speech codified what six months of frenetic diplomacy had already demonstrated. Since taking office, Carney has signed 12 trade and security agreements across four continents. Canada has joined the European Union’s €150 billion Security Action for Europe (SAFE) defense procurement program; the first non-European nation admitted. Recently, Carney announced a strategic partnership with Xi Jinping and opened Canadian markets to Chinese electric vehicles. Ottawa has committed to the largest military spending increase since World War II, deliberately structured to reduce reliance on American defense contractors.
This matters beyond North America because Canada was, until recently, the test case for deep integration with the United States. More than 75% of Canadian exports went south. Supply chains, especially in automotive and energy, were seamlessly continental. Defense was jointly managed through NORAD. If any country had conclusively answered the question of whether binding one’s self to American hegemony was safe, it was Canada.
When allies begin describing authoritarian rivals as more reliable than the United States, something fundamental has broken.
The answer, Ottawa has now concluded, is no. And that conclusion is being watched carefully in Brussels, Tokyo, Canberra, and Seoul.
The proximate cause is the Trump administration’s tariffs, threats to abandon the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and repeated suggestions that Canada should become the 51st US state. But Carney’s Davos speech made clear that the problem runs deeper than one administration. The issue is structural: American policy now swings so dramatically between presidencies that commitments made by one administration cannot be trusted to survive the next. For allies making decade-long investments in defense procurement, energy infrastructure, or trade relationships, this volatility is intolerable.
Carney borrowed a framework from Finnish President Alexander Stubb: “values-based realism.” Canada will remain committed to sovereignty, human rights, and international law in principle. However, Canada will be pragmatic about working with partners who do not share those values. This explains the China pivot. Beijing is not a trustworthy partner, and Canadians know this better than most after the arbitrary detention of the two Michaels—Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig—in 2018 (and released in 2021). But China is predictable in ways that Washington no longer is. As Carney noted in Beijing, the relationship with China is now “more predictable” than the one with the United States.
That statement should alarm policymakers in Washington far more than any tariff retaliation. When allies begin describing authoritarian rivals as more reliable than the United States, something fundamental has broken.
The Canadian pivot also reveals the limits of geographical determinism. American analysts have long assumed that Canada has no real alternatives; that proximity and integration lock Ottawa into the US orbit regardless of policy. Carney is testing that assumption. The Trans Mountain pipeline now ships Canadian oil to Asia. Liquefied natural gas terminals are under construction for Pacific exports. The EU defense partnership opens European procurement to Canadian manufacturers.
Canada cannot replace American trade overnight, but it can build sufficient alternatives to survive without it. That is precisely what Carney has pledged: doubling non-US exports within 10 years.
For other US allies, the lesson is clear. If Canada, the most integrated, most proximate, most culturally similar American ally, has concluded that dependence on Washington is too risky, then no alliance is safe from reassessment. The Europeans are already drawing similar conclusions. The EU’s Mercosur deal and accelerated talks with Japan and South Korea reflect the same diversification logic. Even Australia, historically the most reliable US partner in the Indo-Pacific, is quietly exploring options.
None of this necessarily serves those allies’ long-term interests. China is not a benign alternative to American hegemony. The middle-power coalitions Carney envisions may lack the capacity to provide genuine security. And the economic costs of unwinding continental integration will be substantial. Canada’s gamble may yet prove to be a mistake.
But that is not the point. America’s closest ally has made a rational decision, based on observed evidence, that the United States can no longer be trusted, and is acting accordingly. Other allies are making similar calculations. The network of relationships that has amplified American power since 1945 is fraying, and American policy is what’s fraying it.
Carney closed his Davos speech with a line that deserves attention beyond Ottawa: “Nostalgia is not a strategy.” For those in Washington who assume the old alliances will endure regardless of how allies are treated, the warning applies with equal force. The old order really is not coming back. The question is what replaces it, and whether the United States will have any role in building it.
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Trump to Hike US Prices Because 'Canada Hurt His Feelings' With Reagan Tariffs Ad
"He's increasing taxes on Americans by executive fiat because he didn't like an advertisement that quoted Reagan's (accurate) views on tariffs," said one US journalist. "You (and I) are paying these taxes—not Canada."
Oct 26, 2025
Critics across North America are blasting President Donald Trump's additional 10% import tax on Canadian goods over Ontario's television advertisement featuring former President Ronald Reagan's condemnation of tariffs—an announcement that came Saturday, in the lead-up to the US Supreme Court hearing arguments on his trade war.
"The president announces an arbitrary price hike on Americans because his feelings are hurt by an ad accurately quoting Ronald Reagan's criticism of tariffs," US journalist Aaron Rupar wrote on X in response to Trump's Saturday afternoon Truth Social post.
Billy Binion, a reporter for the American libertarian magazine Reason, similarly said: "I don't get how anyone can support the president having power over tariffs after watching this exchange. He is unilaterally raising taxes on Americans—not because of a ~negotiating~ tactic or to create jobs, but because… Canada hurt his feelings. Congress needs to do its job."
Throughout Trump's trade war, experts have emphasized that Americans ultimately pay more because of his tariffs, despite the president's claims to the contrary. Research published earlier his month by the investment bank Goldman Sachs shows that US consumers are shouldering up to 55% of the costs stemming from his taxes on imports.
"Let's be clear about what this is. Canada isn't paying a goddamned thing," Independent White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg stressed Saturday. "He's increasing taxes on Americans by executive fiat because he didn't like an advertisement that quoted Reagan's (accurate) views on tariffs. You (and I) are paying these taxes—not Canada."
Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, said on X: "1. Reagan's speech is real. 2. It's public domain. 3. Americans pay the cost of the added 10% tariffs, not Canadians. 4. Trump keeps lying because he thinks you're all too stupid to fact-check. 5. The average family will pay an extra $4,900 this year because [of] his tariffs."
The tariff announcement came after Trump suspended trade talks with Canada on Thursday night over the one-minute ad, even though the Canadian federal government did not pay for it. Ontario's provincial government was behind the ad, which uses audio from Reagan's April 25, 1987 radio address on free and fair trade.
Trump on Saturday quoted from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute's Thursday statement, which said that the ad "misrepresents" the address, the Ontario government "did not seek nor receive permission to use and edit the remarks," and the organization "is reviewing its legal options in this matter."
Several journalists and other observers have concluded that "the ad faithfully reproduced Mr. Reagan's words, just in a different order," as the New York Times' Matina Stevis-Gridneff put it.
"When someone says, 'Let's impose tariffs on foreign imports,' it looks like they're doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes for a short while it works—but only for a short time," the ad begins. "Over the long run such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer."
"High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars," the clip of Reagan's voice continues. "Then the worst happens: Markets shrink and collapse; businesses and industries shut down; and millions of people lose their jobs."
Ontario's premier, Doug Ford, said Friday that "our intention was always to initiate a conversation about the kind of economy that Americans want to build and the impact of tariffs on workers and businesses. We've achieved our goal, having reached US audiences at the highest levels. I've directed my team to keep putting our message in front of Americans over the weekend so that we can air our commercial during the first two World Series games."
After speaking with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Ford said, "Ontario will pause its US advertising campaign effective Monday so that trade talks can resume. The people elected our government to protect Ontario—our workers, businesses, families, and communities. That's exactly what I'm doing. Like I said earlier today: Canada and the US are neighbors, friends, and allies. We're so much stronger when we work together. Let's work together to build Fortress Am-Can and make our two countries stronger, more prosperous, and more secure."
Ford's pledge to pull the ad next week clearly did not appease the US president. Hours after Trump announced the new tariffs on Saturday, Dominic Leblanc, the Canadian minister of US-Canada trade, urged engagement at the federal level.
"As the prime minister said yesterday, we stand ready to build on the progress made in constructive discussions with American counterparts over the course of recent weeks," Leblanc wrote on social media. "We will remain focused on achieving results that benefit workers and families in both the United States and Canada, and that progress is best achieved through direct engagement with the US administration—which is the responsibility of the federal government."
Meanwhile, Carney seemed to take swipes at Trump at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Malaysia on Sunday. As CBC reported, he said that "we have all been reminded of the importance of reliable partners—who honor their commitments, who are there in tough times, and who engage collaboratively to fix something that isn't working."
"Canada is such a partner, a dependable partner, and I have come to Kuala Lumpur to say clearly that we want to play a bigger role in this region," Carney continued, as Trump also headed to Malaysia. "Like ASEAN, Canada values the rules-based system. We respect trade agreements and the rule of law. We believe in the value of the free exchange of goods, capital, and ideas."
The escalation between the US and its second-largest trading partner comes as the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments over the president's authority to impose sweeping tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Trump's Saturday remarks were widely regarded as highly relevant to the case.
"Trump is raising US tariffs on Canada by 10% because he's unhappy that Ontario ran an ad quoting Ronald Reagan on why tariffs are bad. This is, of course, insane, and Trump has no legal authority to raise tariffs for that reason," said American finance journalist James Surowiecki. "If the Supreme Court can see this and still accept Trump's national security/national emergency argument for why he should be able to impose whatever tariffs he wants on whomever he wants, they are not serious people."
"We're living in a country where the president just randomly raises taxes on a whim because he's in a snit—and no one stops him, even though the Constitution gives him zero power over tariffs," he added. "This is not a constitutional republic at the moment."
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Economists Pan 'Insane' New Trump Tariffs as US Consumers Struggle With Rising Prices
"Trump's definition of 'winning' is hitting the American people with ever-higher taxes," said economist Dean Baker.
Aug 01, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday used emergency authority to impose high tariff rates on imports from dozens of American trading partners, including Canada—a move that economists criticized as a senseless approach to global trade that will further increase costs for consumers who are already struggling to get by.
Trump outlined the new tariff rates in executive orders signed just ahead of his arbitrary August 1 deadline for U.S. trading partners to negotiate a deal with the White House, whose erratic, aggressive, and legally dubious approach has alarmed world leaders.
Under the president's new orders, Canadian goods that are not covered by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) will face 35% import duties, while steel and aluminum imports will face a 50% tariff rate.
Trump claimed Canada "has failed to cooperate in curbing the ongoing flood of fentanyl and other illicit drugs." But Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney hit back in a statement early Friday, noting that Canada "accounts for only 1% of U.S. fentanyl imports and has been working intensively to further reduce these volumes."
"While we will continue to negotiate with the United States on our trading relationship, the Canadian government is laser-focused on what we can control: building Canada strong," Carney added. "Canadians will be our own best customer, creating more well-paying careers at home, as we strengthen and diversify our trading partnerships throughout the world."
Economist Brad Setser said that while the impact of the higher tariff on Canadian imports could be muted because of the exemption of USMCA-covered products such as oil, the 35% rate is still "insane" and "dumb."
"Same with the high tariff on Switzerland. Crazy," Setser wrote, pointing to the 39% rate for Switzerland imports. "This isn't just protectionism, it is bad protectionism—and will have all sorts of unintended consequences."
The new tariff rates for Canadian goods will take effect Friday while the higher rates for other nations such as Brazil (50%), India (25%), and Vietnam (20%) won't kick in until next week "to give Customs and Border Protection officials time to prepare," The Washington Post reported. Customs and Border Protection collects tariffs, which are effectively taxes paid by importers—who often pass those costs onto consumers in the form of higher prices.
"Trump's definition of 'winning' is hitting the American people with ever-higher taxes," Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote late Thursday.
Recent U.S. economic data indicates that Trump's tariffs are already putting upward pressure on prices—and companies are using the president's trade chaos as an excuse to drive up prices further and pad their bottom lines.
The Tax Foundation noted earlier this week that "a variety of food imports" will be impacted by Trump's tariffs, likely leading to "higher food prices for consumers." More than 80% of Americans are already concerned about the price of groceries and many are struggling to stay afloat, according to survey data released Thursday by The Century Foundation.
Baker warned Thursday that even nations that have agreed to trade frameworks with the U.S. are not out of the woods.
"Deals are meaningless to Trump. He'll break them in a second any time he feels like it," Baker wrote. "I trust everyone negotiating with Trump understands that fact."
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