Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Friday that if his government could not successfully negotiate a suitable trade pact with the Trump administration, he was prepared to wait for a new American president to close the deal.
In an interview with POLITICO in Montreal, Carney also said Canadians were fed up with diplomatic provocations from the United States and described President Donald Trump’s wavering policy toward the Russia-Ukraine war as “unhelpful.”
Carney’s remarks, made upon the conclusion of a summit with European Union officials, represent the most direct brushback to Washington in months from a leader who has calibrated his public comments on the United States amid sensitive trade talks.
Trade negotiations between the United States and Canada have proceeded at a halting pace since Canada walked away from negotiations in August, with new tariffs imposed this fall by both sides. Carney on Friday reiterated his insistence that he would not strike a deal “just for the sake of it.” Asked whether that meant he would hold out for a new president if necessary, the prime minister answered in the affirmative.
“We’ll have to, if that’s what it takes,” Carney told POLITICO, adding: “And American families, American businesses, will also lose out because of that. They’re not winners in this circumstance.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Carney’s remarks about being willing to wait for a new US president to conclude trade talks.
The political stakes around the trade standoff have continued to rise in the United States, where voters upset about the cost of energy and consumer goods are preparing to deliver a judgment on the Trump administration in midterm elections on Tuesday. Several of the most important electoral contests are taking place in border states especially sensitive to Canadian trade relations, including Michigan and Maine.
The American embassy in Ottawa added to tensions in recent days by circulating a document to reporters that accused Canadian government officials of “potential interference in US elections.” The confrontational US ambassador, Pete Hoekstra, said in a podcast published later that there had been no “definitive” determination by American authorities that Canadian political figures were engaged in improper election meddling.
Carney declined to say if he had raised any concerns with Trump about comments from Hoekstra or other American officials, explaining that his focus in conversations with the president was on trade policy and geopolitical concerns such as the wars in Ukraine and Iran. But he made plain that the US administration’s approach had alienated Canada.
“I think Canadians are tired of it,” Carney said. “I think that’s very clear.”
Carney spoke with POLITICO at the conclusion of the 21st EU-Canada summit. While in Montreal, he also unveiled a new national security strategy and committed his government to further investment in the global contest for mastery of artificial intelligence.
The Canadian prime minister, elected from the center-left Liberal Party in 2025 on a surge of patriotic backlash against the Trump administration, has become a pivotal figure in transatlantic politics as he champions solidarity among middle powers squeezed by the United States and China.
Some EU leaders, most significantly European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, have proposed granting Canada a novel status as “associate member” in the continental confederation, an idea Carney has endorsed in concept. But opposition within the EU, particularly from Germany, thwarted efforts to advance von der Leyen’s proposal in Montreal.
Carney attempted to shrug off that setback, stressing that Canada would enjoy “the closest association between any country and the European Union in the world,” regardless of the precise diplomatic terminology. The Canada-EU relationship, he said, would be grounded in “deep cooperation across technology, across trade, across culture, across research, across education.”
Part of that partnership, Carney said, must involve building technological capabilities to lessen dependency on global superpowers. Without mentioning Elon Musk by name, the prime minister alluded to the recent slowdown in Starlink satellite service to Ukraine — reportedly ordered by Musk himself — as an example of the vulnerability derived from excessive dependence on technology belonging to other countries or a single private company.
“If you’re connected to a satellite system that a billionaire, almost trillionaire, decides to turn off at one moment or not, that’s not a good idea,” Carney said.
Carney acknowledged that there was no quick way to displace Canadian and European reliance on American technology, but argued that “pooling our space assets” with Europe could help build Canadian independence more quickly.
With the accelerating global race for AI development as a backdrop, Carney and his European counterparts have been grappling with the comparatively limited resources of their homegrown tech companies. In some cases, leaders have backed their own national champion companies in an effort to gain competitive ground: Carney this week announced new government investment in the Canadian AI company Cohere, which merged earlier this year with Germany’s Aleph Alpha.
In Brussels, angst about competing with American and Chinese AI giants has mounted as European tech authorities weigh options to rein in the fast-advancing technology through legislation and regulation. Carney has expressed less interest in shackling frontier AI, but has called for certain privacy and safety protections and the creation of an international coordinating body on advanced technology.
In the interview, he praised two specific AI executives for taking safety seriously: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Demis Hassabis, the chair and cofounder of Google DeepMind.
Yet Carney, a former central bank governor viewed in Ottawa as a free-market centrist, indicated there was a limit to his deference to the private sector where AI is concerned. Invoking his experience leading the Bank of Canada during the global financial crisis, Carney said powerful industries need “guardrails.” Trump has expressed skepticism of any new regulation that could slow down development of frontier AI models.
“It’s exceptionally difficult for industries to regulate themselves — to truly regulate themselves,” Carney said.
The coming American election is not the only political question mark hanging over Carney and his government. Canada’s attempt to draw closer to the European Union is also at the mercy of voters in multiple European countries who have shifted toward the right, in some cases embracing hard-right parties that despise the EU. Should Marine Le Pen’s National Rally take power in France next year, it could upend the EU and make the “associate membership” proposal a distant memory.
Carney suggested that some nationalist leaders in Europe might find, after winning power, that they have more to gain from warm diplomatic relationships than they had realized before taking power.
“You quickly learn, if you haven’t figured it out yet, if you’re in one of these roles, that to be sovereign is not to be alone. That you need like-minded partners,” Carney said. “Nobody is self-sufficient. The United States is not self-sufficient.”
He allowed, however, that the “range of cooperation” between Canada and Europe could change depending on the outcome of elections across the Atlantic.
“My responsibility is to work with, whether it’s provincial premiers or leaders of other countries, in the best interests of Canada,” Carney said, adding: “Now, working with and having agreement on are two different things.”
No diplomatic dynamic illustrates that more vividly than Carney’s relationship with his counterpart in Washington. Carney offered no prognosis or timeline for resolving the ongoing trade dispute, and several times in the interview he signaled displeasure or irritation with the Trump administration’s actions.
Most pointedly, Carney expressed concern about inconsistent US support for Ukraine in its struggle against Russia. In the run-up to the US elections, Trump has suspended certain economic penalties against Russia while seeking access to Russian diesel that he hopes will lower the cost of energy. Carney did not single out any specific Trump policy but alluded in broad terms to “variance in terms of US actions, with respect to restrictions on, sanctions on Russia, provision of defensive capabilities to Ukraine.”
“That’s been unhelpful,” Carney said.
He also brushed off Trump’s threats to retaliate if Canada and the EU forge a new diplomatic bond that would be disadvantageous to the United States. Asked if he had handled the summit differently out of sensitivity to Trump, Carney rejected the idea out of hand.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “That way lies madness.”
Still, Carney did specify one way he would celebrate a deal with the Trump administration, should one ever arrive.
Carney, who recently received four Brooks Brothers shirts as a gift from Trump, said he had not yet worn any of them but was prepared to do so in the event the countries reach terms.
“I haven’t had occasion to put on the shirts, because we don’t have a mutually advantageous trade deal,” he said.
For the moment, Carney added, “They’re sitting in my closet.”
This story originally appeared on POLITICO and is courtesy of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which harnesses the resources of the company’s newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces, and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, Onet, and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms.
