President Donald Trump singled out Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney during his Davos speech, deriding him as “ungrateful” in his own speech.
In a free-wheeling speech on Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump touted his accomplishments during his first year back in office and reiterated his grievances with the NATO alliance. He singled out Carney’s Tuesday speech, during which he effectively claimed an end to American hegemony.
“Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way, they should be grateful also, but then I watched your prime minister yesterday, he wasn’t so grateful,” Trump said.
“They should be grateful to us, Canada. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements,” he added.
The president made the swipe while discussing his Golden Dome missile defense system plan, pointing out that it would also defend Canada.
On Tuesday, a Globe and Mail report said Canadian Armed Forces reportedly outlined scenarios for a U.S. invasion, emphasizing the growing tensions between the two countries.
Carney’s speech went viral on Tuesday, during which he declared the old “rules-based order” was over and another one was rising. Without naming Trump explicitly, he blamed his policies on ending the old world order and ushering in a new, uncertain one.
“Every day we are reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry. That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must,” Carney said. “This aphorism of Thucydides is presented as inevitable — the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself. And faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along. To accommodate. To avoid trouble. To hope that compliance will buy safety. It won’t.”
CANADA DROPS US-ALIGNED TARIFFS ON CHINESE EVS IN ‘LANDMARK’ TRADE DEAL
“It is time for companies and countries to take their signs down,” he said. “The powerful have their power. But we have something too — the capacity to stop pretending. The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy … but from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, and more just.”
Carney’s recent decision to pursue closer relations with China was criticized by many U.S. analysts as contradicting his pursuit of a “more just” order, given its widespread use of economic coercion, espionage, and human rights abuses.