Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney has called for a new relationship with the United States to “help make America great again”.
In a speech delivered in New York on Thursday, Carney said that there should be a “true partnership” that reimagines cooperation in specific sectors challenged by global competition.
He made the remarks ahead of the mandatory review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in July.
Carney said Canada was diversifying away from the US and signing trade deals with dozens of countries around the world.
“Our core objective across these partnerships is to increase our strategic autonomy. Because we live in a world where integration has been weaponised. Because a country that cannot feed, fuel or defend itself is not truly sovereign,” Carney said.
Donald Trump’s actions – including launching a trade war and suggesting Canada become the 51st US state – have infuriated Canadians and created the political environment for Carney to win the job of prime minister after promising to confront Trump.
The Canadian prime minister has emerged as a spokesperson for a movement of countries looking to find ways to link up and counter the US under Trump. Carney has set a goal for Canada to double its non-US exports in the next decade, saying US tariffs are causing a chill in investment.
“Canada strong will help make America great again. The examples are legion where we should work together and compete with the world together. And to those ends, we have made specific, practical proposals to the US administration,” Carney said.
Canada has been protected by the heaviest impact of Trump’s tariffs by the USMCA, but that trade agreement is up for a review and key sectors like aluminum and steel have been hit hard by tariffs.
Carney noted that Canadian aluminum exports to the US were the energy equivalent of 10 Hoover dams and that it didn’t make sense to replace Canada.
“With America’s growing energy needs, does it make sense to build the gigawatts needed to replace Canada?” Carney said.
He also noted that on automobiles, Canada was the US’s biggest customer, and “an integrated North American market for production is the best and most durable way to confront intense global competition”.
Carney also said on critical minerals, with its vast reserves of potash, nickel, copper and uranium, Canada could be the most reliable supplier that the US needs to put affordable food on the table, to strengthen its national defence and meet soaring demand to power AI.
“At a time of a global energy crisis, Canada provides the United States with the reliable power and critical minerals that help fuel American growth: 99% of US natural gas imports, 85% of electricity imports and 60% of crude oil imports,” Carney said.
Carney said Canada was the US’s largest customer, buying more goods than China, Japan and the Germany combined.
“We know that, when Canada and the United States have had our differences over the years, we have always – eventually – worked through them, because our shared values and common interests run deep. They run through our economies,” he said.
After Trump’s threats to annex Canada as the 51st state, Carney described Canada’s ties to the US as “weaknesses we must correct” and said the US had fundamentally changed its approach to trade, raising tariffs to levels last seen during the Great Depression. In January, Carney referred to “American hegemony” in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, saying that greater integration with great powers created “vulnerabilities to be exploited”.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting
