Mark Carney on Trump and Trade: What Should the Left Do Now?
Why did Canada walk away from the trade talks with the United States at the eleventh hour on Friday August 21 2026? Here is what Canadian prime minister Mark Carney told a press conference the next day:
"For much of our history, Canadians have been able to count on favourable trade conditions: a stable relationship with the United States, increasingly open access to the U.S. market, and rules that both countries understood and respected.
These conditions have not simply shifted – the climate has also changed…
America has changed…
Our government understood, before many, that America would transform all its commercial relationships. That it would put a series of tariffs on its closest allies and use economic integration as a weapon. That its signature was written in pencil…
We have consistently proposed long-term partnerships, while America has often pursued short-term transactions.
That gap between partnership and competitor has remained too wide in recent days…"
Canada-US Relations Have Changed. The Whole Climate Has Changed.
(1) What is Carney saying here? What is he not saying, that some people may have wrongly understood him to be saying?
(2) Above all, what does this mean for what the Canadian Left should be saying and doing? What is the common ground with the Carney Liberal stand, and what mobilizations can the left organize (or join) to rally public support? Where does the Left differ, and what are the different things that we should be saying and doing?
I will answer these two questions in this article. My answers will of necessity be less detailed than I will be able to make them in the near future. Both Trump and Carney have been pretty clear about what they see the problems being, and what they see the solutions being -- in general terms plus a few specifics.
But there is a lot that each of them has yet to reveal about what they will do when push comes to shove. I am writing this before 'shove time' has arrived.
Is It Just Trump? Why is the US Acting This Way on Trade?
So, first of all, what are Carney's views about what the US is doing and why they are doing it? And what is Carney saying his red lines are? What is he willing to agree to in a trade deal, and where does he draw the line?
The short answer is this: Carney believes that the US-dominated 'economic and security' order that was set up after the Second World War was on balance a good one for the world, including for Canada. But America, and not just Trump, has changed. The US is now treating even its closest allies in the Western Alliance in ways that at least echo how colonial powers treated the people that they conquered and colonized in Asia, Africa and Latin America, as colonial subjects. The US is demanding that all countries in the world rearrange their economies and their militaries to more closely serve the United States in its competition with China.
Carney is Willing to Align With Some of America's Anti-China Policies.
Carney is willing to agree to an updated US-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) deal in which Canada will agree to align its policies with the US to a significant degree. Carney is especially willing to do this in areas where Canada agrees that the fact that China is 'a non-market economy' gives it an unfair advantage.
But Carney/Canada has three red lines. First, Canada must retain its political sovereignty to decide on its economic/trade and military procurement policies in areas not explicitly agreed in the USMCA. Second, the USMCA must come as close as possible to a Fortress America free trade zone. Canada (and Mexico) must have more tariff-free access to the US market than any other country in the world. Third, the USMCA must be a long term 'security and economic partnership' where the United States abides by the agreement for the full length of the contract.
Carney Has Red Lines. He Expects that the US Will Cross Them.
But there is one small catch. Carney does not think that the United States (not just Trump, but any US administration going forward) will respect any of the three red lines. He made this very clear in his Davos speech of January 20 2026. He said the same thing again in his press conference of August 22 2026, the day after the trade talks collapsed.
My reading of Carney is that this will not stop him from agreeing to a somewhat anti-China Fortress America USMCA deal. He wants to preserve as much of the old USMCA as possible, because the immediate survival of Canadian businesses and Canadian worker jobs requires this.
And he wants to buy as much time as he can, while he and Canada are making other plans. Those plans are to implement an Industrial Strategy that strengthens the domestic economy, and to multiply trade and non-trade ties with other countries. This will enable Canada to withstand future bullying from the US.
Carney Would Be Happy With the Original NAFTA Free Trade Deal. But It is Not On Offer.
In short, Carney is willing to negotiate a deal that returns as much as possible back to the original NAFTA trade deal of rules-based free trade. But 'America has changed'. It is not willing to accept that old-style deal that presumes the good old days of the US and the West at their zenith. The context for NAFTA was the impending 'collapse of communism' and 'the end of history'. It appeared then that it was true that There Is No Alternative to a world where neoliberal capitalism and Western liberal democracy are king. And there was only one superpower left standing, the US.
The US has changed its stance (according to Carney) for one major reason, because it wants to reorganize the world to ward off the threat of China displacing the United States as the one world hegemon. Trump wants Canada to agree to as many violations of its political sovereignty as possible, short of actually ceasing to exist as a separate entity and actually formally becoming the 51st state.
Carney is Appealing to the One Percenters Outside the US to Reject Appeasement.
What are the implications of these facts for what the left should do?
Carney was clear in both his January 20 Davos speech and August 22 press conference statements that he is a small-l liberal, and that that, for him, this is consistent with his support for the US-led Western Alliance Cold War world economic and political-military order of yesteryear. It is consistent with him still treating the US as a like-minded country, based on liberal values and a free market economy. The US is therefore still an ally and a country that it is okay for Canada to continue to be highly integrated with, as part of the liberal West.
But his Davos speech was an appeal to One Percenters like himself, who are the leaders of states or of large private capitalist organizations, to recognize that this rules-based order is over. And it is not coming back.
And above all he was saying that those leaders could not save that old system by engaging in serial acts of appeasement. They could not save the furniture by giving in to demands from the United States, that required them to gradually surrender bits and pieces of their country's political sovereignty. They could not hold the fort by making one concession after another, that promoted illiberal ideas and enacted illiberal policies.
The Old US-led Western Alliance World Order Was Good for Canada.
Here is a passage from the Davos speech that makes the point:
"For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.
We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false—that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.
This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination."
What Does All This Mean for What the Left Should Do?
I am leaving a lot out here. The purpose of this article is twofold: first, to say what I think Carney's actual bottom line position is, and what it is based on; second, to state very briefly what I think the left should do.
There will be more to say about what Carney is urging other countries to do, and about what the solution he proposes for Canada is. The solution for Canada is being marketed as Build Canada Strong: "building Canada strong at home and diversifying our trading relationships abroad".
It is clear that we on the left will disagree with many of the domestic policies that are justified by the need to Build Canada Strong. We will also continue to disagree with a lot of the Liberal party's foreign policies. Carney's claim that those policies will strengthen Canada vis a vis the US will not automatically persuade us to support them.
The Left May Not Agree with Carney Policies. But We Will Support the Union During a Strike.
We do not share Carney's support for the old US led neoliberal capitalist and neocolonialist world order (although a large majority of the Canadian public, and a significant number of people who view themselves as left-leaning , likely do). We are not interested in policies that aim to Make the West Great Again.
But none of this means that the left should let the Carney Liberals be the only ones that hold up the Canadian flag. The left is for a Canada that is internationalist, that supports equal justice for people and countries everywhere. We can signal that position by holding up the flag at a time when Trump and the US are trying to grind down the political sovereignty of people and countries everywhere. The message sent by brandishing the flag will be clear: No to Appeasement. We Are Standing Up for Our Political Freedom.
We on the left have our own analyses of what is wrong in society in both the US and Canada. We have our own ideas about solutions. But the left should act the way we would if our union was led by non leftists and we were on strike. We would help the non-left leadership and union to win the strike.
No to Appeasement. We are Standing Up for Our Political Freedom.
The left can and should organize on two levels. We should join in all collective actions that educate and unite people to defend political sovereignty and reject appeasement. We should also take independent initiatives. That will most likely mean working within unions, community groups, social movement organizations and the like to explain the issues and to encourage the taking of public stands.
It is likely that Canada will only come out of the Trump-imposed trade war with a win if a whole lot of explaining of the issues is done. The left should lead in uniting people in discussion and action at the grassroots level. The union leadership has rejected the union-busting contract that the US is trying to bully us into accepting. We will be out on strike soon.
The extreme US economic sanctions will start to bite. The Alberta-centered far right and the Polievre 'Canada First' wannabe Trumpites will be actively promoting divisions and doubts. It is time to educate and unite people to reject appeasement, and to stand up together for our political sovereignty.