Prime Minister Mark Carney charts new alliances for Canada as great power rivalry reshapes markets and risk
Canada’s prime minister just told global elites that the “rules-based international order” is dead — and that middle powers like Canada either build new alliances or get “put on the menu” as great powers weaponize trade and finance.
In Davos, Prime Minister Mark Carney described the moment as “a rupture,” not a transition, and urged “middle powers” to act together because “if you are not at the table, you are on the menu,” according to the Financial Post.
He warned that powerful states now treat “economic integration as a weapon,” using “tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, [and] supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.”
Carney tied that warning directly to current flashpoints.
He said “Canada stands firmly behind Greenland” and its “unique right to determine Greenland’s future” as tensions rise over US President Donald Trump’s push for the US to own the territory for security reasons.
Reuters said Carney told Davos that “Canada strongly opposes tariffs over Greenland” and called for focused talks on “security and prosperity in the Arctic,” as Trump threatens tariffs on European allies that oppose his Greenland ambitions.
He also framed his speech as a break with the old order.
CBC News reported that Carney said the story of the “international rules-based order was partially false,” that the strongest exempted themselves “when convenient” and that international law applied with “varying rigour.”
He told Davos “the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy. But we believe that from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, more just.”
For markets, the key signal is Canada’s shift away from relying almost entirely on the US economic umbrella.
The New York Times noted that about 75 percent of Canada’s exports still go to the US, with less than 5 percent going to China, and that the two countries share the world’s longest land border and deep defence integration.
At the same time, Carney has signed a trade deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping that reduces Chinese tariffs on Canadian agriculture and lowers Canadian levies on Chinese electric vehicles, and the two countries have declared a “strategic partnership,” as per the Financial Post.
Reuters added that Carney described “very clear guard rails” in the China relationship but “huge opportunities in energy, both clean and conventional … in agriculture, in financial services.”
Carney is pairing that economic diversification with higher defence and infrastructure spending.
CNN reported that one of his first moves as prime minister was to commit more than $4bn to an “Over-the-Horizon” radar system and a larger, sustained military presence in the Arctic.
According to the Financial Post, he said Canada is working with NATO allies, including the Nordic Baltic 8, to secure the alliance’s northern and western flanks through “unprecedented investments in radar, submarines, aircraft, and boots on the ground, on the ice,” and called Russia the greatest threat to Arctic security.
He also highlighted Canada’s balance sheet and asset base.
Carney pointed to “large reserves of conventional energy and critical minerals” and said “our pension funds are amongst the world’s largest and most sophisticated investors. We have capital, talent and a government with the immense fiscal capacity to act decisively.”
At home, that strategy is drawing both praise and concern.
CBC News reported that former diplomat Peter Boehm called the speech the most consequential by a Canadian prime minister since Louis St. Laurent’s 1947 foreign policy address.
Former ambassador Louise Blais and former Conservative cabinet minister Lisa Raitt, speaking on CBC, warned about provoking Trump and noted how difficult it will be to reduce US economic dominance quickly.
The New York Times said even some of Carney’s senior advisers see “a chance of under delivering,” noting that no partner can quickly replace the US, and pointed out that Carney is one seat short of a parliamentary majority as expectations rise.
