“There is almost nothing normal anymore in the United States,” says the politician who was applauded in Davos

In a sign that high tensions between the US and Canada continue, Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday denied that he had retracted comments that angered President Donald Trump and said that “almost nothing is normal in the United States,” Reuters writes.

Citing US trade policy, Carney gave a viral speech last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in which he urged nations to embrace the end of the rules-based global order that Washington once “championed”.

“We know that the old order will not return. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy,” said the Canadian prime minister in Davos. “We are in the middle of a rupture, not a transition,” Carney pointed out. A new reality has set in, Carney insisted: “Let's call it by its name: a system of intensifying great power rivalry, in which the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a means of coercion.”

At the end of the speech in Davos, the representatives of the political, economic and intellectual environment of the world rose to their feet and applauded the Canadian Prime Minister.

Carney — citing U.S. tariffs on key Canadian imports — is pushing to diversify trade with countries other than Canada's southern neighbor. The US currently receives about 70% of all Canadian exports under the US-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Agreement.

“The world has changed, Washington has changed. There is almost nothing normal anymore in the United States – that is the truth,” Carney told the House of Commons in the Canadian parliament when asked about the future of trade negotiations with Washington.

Trump reacted with displeasure to Carney's speech in Davos. Canada “only exists because of” the United States, Trump claimed, and later said he would impose a 100 percent tariff on Canadian imports if Ottawa struck a trade deal with China.

After Trump and Carney spoke earlier on Monday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Canadian leader had “walked back very aggressively” on some of the remarks.

“To be absolutely clear, and I said this to the president (Trump) — I meant what I said in Davos,” Carney told reporters.

Canada will respond to the tariffs “by building partnerships abroad (…) and by building partnerships at home” and “we are prepared to respond positively by building this new relationship through the USMCA. He understood that,” Carney said he also told Trump. The USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement) is a trade agreement effective July 1, 2020 that replaced the old NAFTA agreement, facilitating tariff-free trade between the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

Carney also told members of the House of Commons that a formal review of the USMCA pact, scheduled for this year, will begin in the coming weeks. He did not give further details.

Earlier this month, Trump argued that the United States did not need the USMCA, calling the agreement “irrelevant.”