Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, a China-friendly leftist, insisted on Sunday that he was not pursuing a free trade agreement with China that would endanger the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) following President Donald Trump’s threat to impose a 100 percent tariff on Canada over its closeness to Beijing.
Carney visited China in mid-January, his first trip to the country since becoming prime minister and the second since a visit in October 2024 that resulted in a massive sweetheart deal for his then-employer, Brookfield Asset Management. The recent China visit resulted in agreements that would lift barriers to Chinese product dumping into Canada and expand Chinese Communist Party access to the Canadian economy.
Following the signing of that agreement, Carney spoke at the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos, Switzerland, trashing “American hegemony” and claiming that the traditional friendly relationship with America was concluding.
President Trump responded to these developments in various posts on his website, Truth Social, this weekend. On Saturday, he declared Carney was “sorely mistaken” if he believed that he could use Canada to facilitate an increase in Chinese imports into the United States.
“China will eat Canada alive, completely devour it, including the destruction of their businesses, social fabric, and general way of life,” Trump warned. “If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff against all Canadian goods and products coming into the U.S.A.”
Trump later posted, “The last thing the World needs is to have China take over Canada. It’s NOT going to happen, or even come close to happening!”
On Sunday, Trump wrote about the situation again, stating it was “so sad to see” that “China is successfully and completely taking over” Canada.
In addition to the tariff threat, President Trump announced on Friday that he would withdraw an invitation to Carney to join the “Board of Peace,” a global coalition led by the United States intended to initially help with the reconstruction of Gaza following the war between the jihadist terrorist organization Hamas and Israel. The letter did not specify why Canada would no longer be invited; China also received an invitation to join and has not responded formally at press time.
Carney spoke with reporters on Sunday regarding the tensions with Washington, downplaying the closeness between Ottawa and Beijing.
“We have to keep the focus on protecting Canadians, protecting our communities, protecting our borders, protecting our way of life, and supporting many Canadians who feel the squeeze, the cost of living, affordability,” Carney insisted.
On Trump’s warning specifically, Carney emphasized that Canada has USMCA agreements “not to pursue free trade agreements with non-market economies without prior notification.”
“We have no intention of doing that with China or any other non-market economy,” he asserted. “What we’ve done with China is to rectify some issues that developed in that last couple of years. In many respects, we’re going, to use the expression, back to the future with respect to EVs, with respect to agriculture, with respect to fish products and other food products, but with other protections.”
Carney’s remarks did not address his derisive comments towards the United States at Davos. Carney offered the WEF an apocalyptic vision of a “rupture in the world order, the end of a nice story, and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints” — criticizing America, not the genocidal Chinese communist regime.
“American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security… this bargain no longer works,” Carney declared last week.
Carney suggested that Canada would embark upon a new foreign policy journey that minimizes ties to America.
“But I also submit to you that other countries, particularly middle powers like Canada, are not powerless,” he said. “They have the capacity to build a new order that embodies our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of states.”
The Chinese Communist Party was enthusiastic about Carney’s visit to Beijing on January 15, calling it a “new starting point” with Canada. Relations between the two countries had deteriorated somewhat during the term of Carney’s predecessor Justin Trudeau as a result of the Chinese government taking Canadian citizens hostage, opening secret police stations in the country, and actively meddling in Canadian elections.
“Standing at a new starting point, China is willing to work with Canada to uphold the strategic partnership,” Chinese Premier Li Qiang said during his meeting with Carney, “strengthen dialogue and communication, enhance political mutual trust, respect each other’s core interests, seek common ground while shelving differences, and continuously expand pragmatic cooperation to add more impetus to the development of both countries.”
Li declared his country “ready to enhance cooperation with Canada” and “jointly uphold multilateralism and free trade, improve global governance, and make the international order more just and equitable.”
Carney has maintained close ties to the Chinese government throughout his career, which did not include any political positions until being hand-picked by Trudeau to serve as unelected prime minister following his departure in 2025. In October 2024, while still working for Brookfield Asset Management, Carney visited Beijing and held meetings with top officials. Shortly thereafter, Brookfield secured a $276 million loan at a very favorable four-percent interest rate.
“His company owes the Chinese state-owned bank a quarter billion dollars. He protected a Liberal candidate & MP who said a Canadian citizen should be turned over to Beijing for a bounty,” Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, who lost to Carney in the prime minister race after once boasting an over 20-percent lead, said at the time.
During the election, the Canadian government election monitoring task force found “large spikes of coordinated inauthentic behaviour” online from Chinese state-linked social media promoting Carney’s prime minister bid. The task force nonetheless bizarrely concluded that the “inauthentic behavior” did not meaningfully affect the election.
https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2026/01/26/leftist-canada-pm-mark-carney-says-no-free-trade-with-china-after-trump-threatens-100-tariff/
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