Donald Trump has met his match in Mark Carney

The US president respects those made in his own self-image – powerful, determined, and with his people full-square behind him. Canada’s newly elected prime minister could yet lead a new global resistance, says Sean O’Grady

Elbows up, Canada! It’s often remarked that Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England and newly elected prime minister of Canada, owes his rise to Donald Trump. This is only partly true.

President Trump’s childish remarks – about how his northern neighbour would be better off as the 51st state, about former “governor” Justin Trudeau, and how America was “subsidising” Canada by hundreds of millions of dollars a year – certainly re-awakened a keen sense of national pride in Canadians. It also inflicted deep damage on Trump’s nominal local ally, Pierre Poilevre.

But it was the Canadian people who decided to use their democratic rights to defy Trump. Rightly tired of being mocked and told what to do, they could have opted for someone more congenial to Trump; they were in no mood to do so.

Carney’s victory carries an important lesson for the rest of the world: it pays to stand up to Trump. It is rumoured that Carney recently threatened Trump with a fire sale of Canada’s considerable holdings of US Treasury bonds, something that Carney has smilingly declined to deny in a television interview. Indeed, the rumour suggests that Carney was informally orchestrating a wider sell-off of US Treasuries with the Europeans and the Japanese – not that markets needed much extra encouragement to dump US dollar assets in the face of Trump’s gyrating trade policies.

As a former central banker, Carney would have well understood the sobering effects such a move would – and did – have on American policy. Carney, the former Bank of Canada boss who went on to lead the Bank of England during and in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, also knows how to operate at the highest levels of international finance and politics. When he turned up at the Labour conference in 2023 to offer his endorsement to Rachel Reeves as a “serious” figure, it showed the world status he enjoys.

Carney is respected globally, and for good reason. Trump didn’t know what he was up against. But all of Carney’s expertise would have been worthless without his mandate from the Canadian people, now confirmed.

Contrast this with poor old Trudeau. When the former prime minister warned Trump that Canada would “cease to exist” because of his tariffs, Trump sniffed weakness. Marco Rubio, US secretary of state, has said as much, turning Trudeau’s plea for mercy into an invitation for the United States to rescue it by incorporation into the United States (a clever way for Rubio, who must think Trump a dangerous idiot, to defend his boss).

Now, under Carney, there is no question that Canada will cease to exist. Trump doesn’t call Carney “governor”.

Carney is not the only one standing up to Trump. So too is President Xi of China, who has even greater economic leverage and an even bigger pile of US Treasury bonds at his disposal. He is not, contrary to Trump’s claims, begging Trump for a trade deal but busily getting on with exploring alternatives to US markets, just as Carney is.

China is not to be bullied. So far, the Europeans and the British have been more conciliatory, less keen to escalate the dispute and trying, against the odds, to preserve what’s left of the Atlantic alliance and post-war economic order.

Some leaders, rare ones, seem to have found a way to gain Trump’s respect and confidence, and have even exerted some persuasive effect over him – Keir Starmer, in pursuit of British interests, and, even more remarkably, given Trump’s contempt for her nation, Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico.

But what has happened in Canada is striking and important. Trump respects a leader who is made in Trump’s own image of himself – determined, powerful, and with his or her people behind them. He has more than met his match in Carney – polite, urbane, intelligent – and the world has found a worthy leader for the informal global liberal backlash/Trump resistance movement.