Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is urgently trying to reduce dependence on the United States as President Donald Trump uses tariffs and economic pressure against America’s longtime ally TORONTO -- For nearly four decades, Canada built its economy around closer integration with the United States. President Donald Trump has turned that dependence into leverage, imposing tariffs, threatening Canada’s sovereignty and openly seeking to pull Canadian industrial production south. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has moved on.
Rather than return to trade talks or wait for the next U.S. president to restore the old relationship, he is urgently building a future in which Canada is less dependent on America. Last week, Carney embraced the prospect of Canada becoming the European Union’s first associate member, not as a step toward full membership, but as a way to reduce Canada’s dependence on any single country without ceding control over its own decisions. Carney told the European Parliament on Thursday that countries need enough economic strength to keep any one power from dictating their choices.
He carried that argument into a meeting Sunday with French President Emmanuel Macron in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, the French territory just off Newfoundland’s coast. Carney’s relentless schedule reflects the urgency of his push to build alternatives to the United States. He began last week in Toronto hosting some of the world’s biggest investors, flew to Strasbourg, France, for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the European Union address, raced to Liverpool, England, to meet Britain’s new prime minister and returned to Strasbourg to address the European Parliament.
He met Macron in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon before flying back to Ottawa to meet Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. On Monday, he is set to open a new session of Parliament before heading to New York for the United Nations General Assembly. Trump has suggested Canada’s closer relationship with the EU could amount to a “hostile act” and threatened “very heavy tariffs” on Europe if he judged the move unfriendly.
Canada could become a test case for other middle powers trying to avoid being pushed around by larger countries. In his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, Carney argued that “middle powers must act together,” warning that “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” Støre echoed Carney on Sunday, saying tariffs should not become “a weapon to be used against countries, because we will all end up losers.” The next major step in shaping that proposed relationship is an Oct. 29-30 Canada-EU summit in Montreal. For Canada, that means undoing some of the reliance developed over nearly 40 years.
Free Trade Agreement and later NAFTA deepened integration, creating cross-border supply chains in autos, energy and manufacturing. Roughly 70% of Canada’s exports went to the U.S. Europe remains nowhere close to replacing the U.S. market.
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