Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has legions of U.S. fans, because of his most un-Canadian moxie in standing up to President Trump. In his latest move, Carney has even enlisted the EU to invent an associate member status, just for Canada. Take that, Donald!
But there is a lot less to this latest move than meets the eye—and a lot more about the neoliberal Carney that you need to know about. For starters, Canada already has a free-trade agreement with the EU, so associate member status would add nothing. Creation of such a category would also require amendment of the EU’s basic law, which requires unanimous consent of the 27 member states. That’s not going to happen.
So Carney’s trip to Brussels and speech to the European Parliament was purely performative. The press ate it up, and Trump took the bait. If Canada were to become an associate member of the EU, that could be viewed as “a hostile act,” Trump warned. “I will put very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe on many things.”
Trump has basically transformed Carney from a centrist banker on shaky political ground into a national patriot. As our friend Lori Wallach of Rethink Trade, who has done a deep investigation of Carney, reminds us, when Carney became leader of the Canadian Liberal Party, succeeding the unpopular Justin Trudeau, he did so as the former governor of both the Canadian and U.K. central banks and an alum of Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg LP, and Brookfield Asset Management. Not much of a liberal.
However, it isn’t Carney’s biography that’s problematic, but his policies. Carney was untested until Trump saved his Canadian bacon by launching a preposterous trade war against America’s closest trading partner and long-standing ally, on the imbecile premise that Canada was a prime source of smuggled fentanyl. Trump then made noises about annexing Canada as the 51st state.
The truculence of Carney’s most un-Canadian response transformed the former banker into a national hero. But as Wallach points out, the rest of his policies are still those of a banker.
Carney plans a multibillion-dollar new west coast oil pipeline, Wallach told me. This is advertised as helping to avert the latest Alberta secession vote. But, as Wallach points out, it is also part of a broader Carney evisceration of virtually all Canadian climate policy so severe as to end Canada’s attainment of its 2050 net-zero targets.
Wallach adds, “Carney’s Trumpy policies include a maple leaf version of DOGE cutting 40,000 federal government workers and $60 billion Canadian, including many working on food safety, enforcement of labor rights, government research, and science and environmental protection. He is also pushing against broad Canadian public opposition to privatize national airports and maritime ports.”
“Carney is entertaining calls from Canada’s big business lobby,” Wallach adds, “to alter labor law so as to limit Canadian workers’ right to strike. He also has infuriated Canadian unions with his plan to import EVs made with forced labor.
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As a corporate globalist, Carney has even sought to expand the neoliberal Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was devised by Wall Street and Big Tech to supersede national regulation. This deal was too much both for congressional Democrats and for Trump, and the U.S. never joined.
Until Trump inflated Carney’s national popularity, the Liberals had to rely on the support of the social democratic New Democratic Party for a working majority in Parliament, which restrained the drift to the corporate right. Now, based on by-election wins, Carney and the Liberals have an absolute majority. You just never know where Trump’s impulsive carom shots will land.
The actual impact of the tariff war, Wallach notes, is very small beer (make mine Molson). “U.S. tariffs on $20 billion of Canadian imports hit less than one-half of 1 percent of total U.S. goods imports,” Wallach points out. “And unless you must have Canadian Eiswein or hockey sticks, lower-tariff alternatives are available. Canadian tariffs on a similar amount of U.S. imports hits 3 percent of total Canadian goods imports.”
There is a neat symbiosis between Carney and Trump. While Carney is lucid where Trump is lunatic, the much-hyped “trade war” serves both men as a useful distraction from other issues. In Trump’s case, the policies are overtly destructive. In Carney’s, they are more insidious.
“Absent the U.S.-Canada trade war news flood and related anti-Trump Canadian patriotism,” Wallach told me, “Carney’s domestic oligarch-first agenda would be facing scrutiny and political blowback. Instead, Carney’s political standing grows every time he fights with Trump.”
