LILLEY: Carney warns against U.S. ties after betting his fortune on America
· Toronto Sun
For a man so heavily invested in the United States, Mark Carney certainly wants us to fear the USA and to see it as a threat. The prime minister’s video address, released on Sunday, contained several warnings about being too close to the Americans.
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He even invoked the War of 1812 while invoking the idea that we need to fight a common enemy today.
“The U.S. has fundamentally changed its approach to trade, raising its tariffs to levels last seen during the Great Depression. Many of our former strengths, based on our close ties to America, have become our weaknesses; weaknesses that we must correct,” Carney said.
“The US has changed and we must respond.”
Carney’s deep ties to the U.S. economy
Let’s examine Carney’s close ties to America, shall we?
Prior to becoming PM, Carney was chair of the board of Brookfield Asset Management, and while there, he moved the firm’s head office to New York from Toronto. He was also a board member of Bloomberg Philanthropies, based in New York, and Stripe, the global payments firm based in San Francisco.
After he became PM and he placed his investment portfolio in a blind trust, we learned how deeply invested Carney was in the United States as compared to Canada.
Of the 567 companies listed in his portfolio, just three were Canadian, while 91% of Carney’s portfolio was invested in American companies. He had more investments in Irish, British and Dutch firms than he had in Canadian ones.
And Brookfield, the massive company he moved to NYC at the end of 2024, Carney had stock options in the company worth $6.8 million.
So, while Carney tells the rest of us to remember the War of 1812, he remembers to bet big on the American economy for his own personal wealth.
A new U.S. trade deal was once Carney’s top priority
Meanwhile, the jobs of real people are on the line. People in the industries he highlighted, like auto, steel and lumber, could see further layoffs.
Less than a year ago, Carney instructed his new cabinet via a mandate letter that securing a new trading relationship with the United States was his government’s number one priority. During the election, he told Canadians that he was the one who knew Donald Trump and would be able to handle the American president and secure a deal.
Now, it feels like Carney is using this video to soften the blow that CUSMA may not be renewed.
Things will not go back to the way they were before Trump’s re-election. Even if the Americans changed presidents tomorrow, things would not be the same.
But what Carney is trying to sell Canadians about our pivot away from the United States is nothing but pure fantasy.
Diversification talk vs. economic reality
We can and must diversify our trade, but we’ve been talking about doing that for decades with little success. Twenty years ago, we had free trade deals with just a handful of countries. Now we have trade deals covering 51 countries.
Carney doesn’t need to seek new trade deals; he needs to work the ones we have.
In 2024, Canadian exports to the United States were worth US$419.7 billion. Our next four largest export markets – China $21.1 billion, U.K. $19.6 billion, Japan $10.5 billion and Mexico $6.1 billion – are a fraction of what we sell to the United States.
Any meaningful trade diversification will take years, and there will be pain.
Carney prioritizes his party over his country
Rather than warning us about the dangers of being close to the Americans, while investing heavily in the United States, Mark Carney should be working hard to land a deal with Washington while simultaneously building alliances and trading relationships elsewhere.
Instead, he’s doing what Liberals always do: he’s putting his party before his country.
Carney knows that picking a fight or issuing a warning about Donald Trump is great for domestic politics.
That it’s bad for the Canadian economy appears to be your problem, not his.