Carney gave an excellent speech at Davos today with a standing ovation from the crowd. This was a Churchill-level speech and illustrates just how bright he is.
While Carney was delivering his speech, Trump was blathering on for hours about nothing.
I thought it was a great speech. I thought of Churchill but in the end decided it did not quite meet that level. The best speech I can ever remember from a Prime Minister of Canada, easily eclipsing my previous favourite “A proof is a proof” by Jean Chretien.
It is a truly excellent speech, full of candor and clear thinking. Well worth reading or watching in its entirety. Here’s a chunk if it and a link to the full text:
"It’s a pleasure – and a duty – to be with you at this turning point for Canada and for the world.
Today, I’ll talk about the rupture in the world order, the end of a nice story, and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints.
But I also submit to you that other countries, particularly middle powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that embodies our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of states.
The power of the less powerful begins with honesty.
Every day we are reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry. That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.
This aphorism of Thucydides is presented as inevitable – the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself. And faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along. To accommodate. To avoid trouble. To hope that compliance will buy safety.
It won’t.
So, what are our options?
In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless. In it, he asked a simple question: how did the communist system sustain itself?
His answer began with a greengrocer. Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: “Workers of the world, unite!” He does not believe it. No one believes it. But he places the sign anyway – to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists.
Not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.
Havel called this “living within a lie.” The system’s power comes not from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true. And its fragility comes from the same source: when even one person stops performing — when the greengrocer removes his sign — the illusion begins to crack.
It is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.
For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, praised its principles, and benefited from its predictability. 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 that international law applied with varying rigour 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 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 laid bare the risks of extreme global integration.
More recently, great powers began 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.
The multilateral institutions on which middle powers relied— the WTO, the UN, the COP – the architecture of collective problem solving – are greatly diminished.
As a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions. They must develop greater strategic autonomy: in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance, and supply chains.
This impulse is understandable. A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself, or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.
But let us be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable.
And there is another truth: if great powers abandon even the pretence of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from “transactionalism” become harder to replicate. Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships.
Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. Buy insurance. Increase options. This rebuilds sovereignty – sovereignty that was once grounded in rules, but will be increasingly anchored in the ability to withstand pressure.
As I said, such classic risk management comes at a price, but that cost of strategic autonomy, of sovereignty, can also be shared. Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortress. Shared standards reduce fragmentation. Complementarities are positive sum.
The question for middle powers, like Canada, is not whether to adapt to this new reality. We must. The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls – or whether we can do something more ambitious.
The full text is here:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mark-carney-speech-davos-rules-based-order-9.7053350
Yeah, so. Since integration has been publicly highlighted as a tool of subjugation, Canada is probably not looking to integrate its economy any longer. At least not Carney, and 100% not with Trump. This is quite the “put all your cards on the table” moment. Yikes.
On the bright side, Carney however is signaling that he is open to multilateral deals with all other middle powers. We are each others salvation. We just need to recognize the reality we are in and embrace it.
Honestly this fits exactly with what Carney has been actively pursuing; opening new trade deals with unfree countries who would normally be shunned as part of a wider grand strategy of economic integration (with the USA led democracy bloc) and isolation (of weaker non-democratic powers).
Trump has upturned that apple cart. Canada cannot uphold its values-based economic strategy once the USA has, itself, uses its key tenet (our mutual economic reliance) as a tool for subjugation and conquering us. Trump has killed it all.
Europe is coming around to it, but they still won’t toss away NATO; not while Ukraine is still at war. Europe haven’t yet built up a cohesive and dynamic integrated military and economic EU (if they can ever pull THAT off). EU politics is still a bag of cats. Getting better by the decade, but it’s not like an actual federated country (the US).
Edit: I do like that they have recognized (finally) Trump’s threats as serious and are sending a canary multi-nation force to Greenland. If Trump attacks he’ll need to stab all these countries in the face. It will be as clear a betrayal as ever. No Euro-MAGA fascists and Neville Chamberlains can hand wave that away. NATO will be dead. USA will be an enemy.
I’d dispute this a bit. The European NATO members train together all the time, and there aren’t very many gaps in their collective military forces. While they do not collectively outnumber the US military, the force size difference isn’t overwhelming and they’re not missing many capabilities that they’d want. They’d be somewhat short on the raw logistics and naval power required to do the sort of global force projection that the US is capable of, but that’s really about it. It’s true that existing NATO planning would be based on the expectation of leaning on the US in those areas, but for any conflicts in or near Europe they’d be fine.
Of course, in a real all-out fight for Greenland in the near future, that force projection gap would be decisive, and I wouldn’t expect European forces to put up much more than a token defense.
I’ll take your word for it. Perhaps the biggest problem is the lack of political will. I just find it difficult that they would be so unable to muster up a unified Ukraine defence in the face of what is clear territory expansion by Russia.
I do understand that “it pays to be a member” and Ukraine isn’t one, but its still a war on their border. The old, violent, arrogant, and endless warring Europe of the previous centuries would be rolling in their graves seeing how feckless they have become (jk, jk).
Sort of Carney-adjacent, but why is Rob Ford bitching so much about letting some Chinese EV’s into the Canadian market?
The top 5 selling EV’s in Canada are the Tesla model 3, Tesla Model Y, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Hyundai Kona and VW ID.4 NONE OF THESE ARE MADE IN CANADA.
EV sales have actually slowed recently, partly due to the reductions in government grants. Major auto makers are slowing their moves toward making EV’s. In fact, our Conservative opposition regularly shits on the concept of supporting EV’s
So why is Doug Ford wanting to support companies that don’t even make cars in Canada? What the hell is his game here, besides spreading bullshit to make political hay?
There are a bunch of EV factory deals (and battery plant deals) for Ontario that may now be in trouble.
Plus he’s a politician. Can’t waste any opportunity to pander. It doesn’t need to make sense.
Rob = crack smoking dead guy, Doug = hash dealing live guy.
Because auto sector workers are a big part of his base and he’s finally realizing that American companies with plants in Canada does not equate to a Canadian auto industry.
I think those were more "framework of a plan of a concept kind of deals. Nothing concrete, and some companies were already pulling back on the timelines. It smelled of vapourware to me.
Ford understands autoworkers and unions support his party. It is unsurprising he speaks out against this modest deal.
(The Washington Post editors made a lot of noise about Carney saying China is more predictable than the current US administration. Whether this is true misses the point. The US abrogated a trade deal, signed by Trump through to 2031, on the basis of the fiction of a national emergency since under 0.5% of fentanyl entering the US comes from Canada. No one thinks China is exceedingly predictable; Carney was making a general point for a specific audience.)
On one hand, I have read 70% of Ontario built automobiles are by Japanese companies. Trump has certainly created uncertainty as to where and when companies want to build future plants. China has an enormous glut of electric vehicles, but Ford would likely welcome Chinese investment in Ontario should they build factories here (of unclear advantage at this point). Competitors would not. China has interfered in Canadian elections and with policing. If Chinese vehicles are cheaper and better quality, consumers may want them. In any case, it gives Carney something to discuss, and does not make him look like a pushover.
On the other hand, Carney has limited options to deal with the US. Even if this modest deal annoys them. “Only” 3% of cars is still a much higher percentage of electric cars (25%?). 15% is still a pretty high tariff on canola - so this is a starting point. At the moment, the future of green technology and fruitful scientific research looks largely Chinese. Canada cannot ignore this huge market, and has been unsuccessful (and somewhat naïve) in persuading large and ancient countries to embrace “Canadian values”. Carney is correct one deals with the world as it is. This deal is fairly small potatoes - Canada is going to continue to trade mostly with America.
Carney brought his balls to Davos, and made an important speech. Of course it risks a response. But when you don’t have many options, sticking to your principles is often the best move.
Ha, I always get these two mixed up.
You mean Doug, and I presume it’s because he’s hypersensitive to any threats to the auto industry in Ontario. On a side note, while I realize that Tesla is losing sales even as the EV market grows, it’s incredible the number of Teslas I see around here every day.
The Chinese EVs (BYD specifically) are apparently pretty good according to reviews from other countries, though they can benefit from further engineering refinements. But I think Carney did the right thing here. Improved trade relationships are generally mutually beneficial, a fact apparently unknown to the tariff-loving Orange Imbecile down south.
Moderating:
I’ve moved the extended sidetrack into it’s own thread:
Seemed like a fine topic, and unintentional drift, but absolutely off topic past @wolfpup’s post on why Ford may have cared. The allowance for Chinese EVs is still fair game in terms of discussing Carney and the political consequences though. No warnings or directed notes applied, more housekeeping than anything.
Apparently Trump has withdrawn his kind offer to Carney to join his “Board of Peace”. I can think of better ways to spend $1B, even if one’s mind has not gone to pieces.
I think Carney’s speech was brave. But what further purpose is served by continuing to comment on Trump’s rambles?
(Carney did not show up for the first meeting after Britain, France and Germany declined to join worthy countries like Russia.)
My reaction falls squarely in the “No. Don’t. Stop.” zone. The invitation was a classic no-win scenario. Accept it, and we tie ourselves to Trump’s bullshit. Decline it, and we become an even bigger target for his retaliation.