How Canada’s Trump-dumping PM Mark Carney became the leader the West really needs

A certain British right-wing newspaper recently rang me and asked if I would write them a profile of Mark Carney. Before I could answer, the paper’s commissioning editor added: “Because he ticks every one of our hate boxes ... Remainer, foreign, rich, hippy wife, eco-activist”. You’ve not added “in favour of trans rights”, I quipped. He replied: “If you get that, you’ve the front page.”

It says much about the Canadian prime minister that he inspires such loathing in certain circles. He’s locked in a trade war with Donald Trump, pitching his country’s economy against another 13 times its size. After trade talks between the two collapsed last month, Trump imposed 50 per cent tariffs on about $20bn in Canadian goods and threatened worse. But Carney is this week going all-out, persuading investors to spend and build factories in the north. Some 300 CEOs and bosses from some of the world’s biggest investment firms – who together manage more than $120 trillion in assets – are gathering in Toronto for the Canada Investment Summit.

That sum forces Trump to sit up and take notice. “Canada is about so much more than being next to the United States,” Carney said. “We have what the world wants.”

It does. Canada has enormous energy and mineral resources, combined with a young, educated workforce and trade agreements that give businesses based in Canada access to roughly 1.5 billion consumers around the world. “They are coming because of Canada. If they wanted to go to the United States, they would go to the United States.”

After encouraging the money-folks to ignore Washington and go with Canada, he then heads to Europe where he hopes to persuade the EU leaders to admit Canada as an associate member of the free trading bloc.

He’s reportedly told his special envoy to Europe to “scope out the most ambitious possibilities short of full membership”. When collared by reporters, Carney said: “We share the same values. We have the same priorities, and we have very complementary strengths.” He continued: “We're stronger together. And this is at a time when the world’s more dangerous and divided, and friends need to stick together at these times.”

Carney is also coming to the UK, to meet Andy Burnham. He’s bringing, too, a commitment to support Ukraine.

He gave notice of his stance at this year’s Davos, also attended by Trump. There, he urged the middle powers to join forces. Said Carney: “The old order is not coming back.” All of which serves to make you wish that others were more courageous and prepared to stand up to the bully in the White House.

He’s doing what others could do, perhaps should do, but don’t. To be fair to them, he has natural resources at his disposal that they don’t have. Even so, his assertiveness may yet prove foolhardy if the wounded bear strikes back. For all his bravado, Canada is very dependent on the US, much more so than vice versa.

But Carney possesses strengths that others caught in Trump’s crosshairs do not. He is economically well-qualified and hugely connected in the world’s smartest boardrooms, having run the central banks of Canada and Britain and worked at Goldman Sachs for 13 years and latterly chairing Bloomberg and Brookfield Asset Management. Trump loathes many bankers with a passion, ever since he was trying to persuade them to lend him their cash when he was in Manhattan real estate. Carney is everything the US President is not, which must make Trump despise him further.

He’s added to his strength by becoming a skilled orator. Not known while at the Bank of England for the punchiness of his public-speaking, then he came across as a highly accomplished technocrat. Now, though, perhaps fired by the position he now finds himself in charge of an entire country as opposed to a grey-suited, conservative central bank and relishing the challenge of battling Trump, he has come into his own.

First, there was the Davos blast. He hailed a “rupture in the world order”, and “the end of a pleasant fiction” that the world could rely on the US and look to the superpower to maintain the peace. He called for a new “geometry” of mid-sized powers combining, “because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu”. The US was not welcome.

Then, he ended the trade talks. He didn’t wait for Trump to jump; he did. In doing so, he did what those in his sort of job rarely do, alas, and told his people straight. There was a “storm blowing in from Washington”, a veiled reference to the wildfires on the border that so riled Trump. The US could no longer be a reliable, trusted partner, since it behaves “as if its signature was written in pencil”.

“We are masters in our own home and the partner of choice abroad.” He added: “We have been under no illusions. We recognised from the start that America has changed.”

Canada, he said, “is becoming stronger and less dependent on America. We are already giving ourselves more than they can take away. And we are just getting started. Canadians don’t submit to the weather – we thrive in it. We don’t wait to see which way the wind is blowing. Or surrender ourselves to the waves to be storm-tossed by events. We set our own course. We make our own weather.”

In short, his Canada is not clinging to some historic convention, which sees his nation pushed around, as Britain does with its “special relationship” with the US. He is not waiting to see what Trump does next; he is taking a lead.

Likewise on Europe. If Canada can become an associate member, why not Britain? Andy, what are you waiting for?

Incidentally, I rebuffed the newspaper’s approach. The piece never did appear. Presumably, others did the same.