Donald Trump threatened Canada’s Mark Carney during his rambling Davos speech on Wednesday (21 January), where he claimed that the nation “only lives because of the United States”. During his address at the World Economic Forum, the US president said that Ottawa should be “grateful” to Washington for all the “freebies” it receives. “Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements,” he said. It comes after Mr Carney warned that the old world order was in the “midst of a rupture” and was “not coming back,” during his own speech in Switzerland on Tuesday (20 January).
Where does Canada go from here? First Carney’s speech and now this? My mind is fucking reeling and I do not know what is going to happen or what the best course of action is.
Obviously pivoting away from the US, but that also “provokes” invasion (which would be a mistake since they are spreading themselves thin already by threatening war with several other countries).
The year has barely started and it already has me like this:
The key thing is that Trump’s tariffs and threats have disproportionally weakened the comprador class’ political capital in countries like Canada, to the point where the national bourgeoisie are now arguably more dominant on the federal level.
Carney is now pivoting away from the US and reducing economic dependence, while simultaneously pushing his citizens to ‘buy Canadian’, all of which benefits the national bourgeoisie while putting the comprador class in a difficult spot. This means that for the first time in close to a century, Canada’s ruling class are not entirely aligned with American imperialism.
This is possibly one of the biggest signs of imperialism in crisis in recent times, when a country so deeply integrated in the US’ system feels that its constraints outweigh the benefits. So far, this pivot is more symbolic than systemic, but I do think structural change is coming, and it will mean that the material interests of Canada’s capitalists will increasingly diverge from that of the US’.
I think the smartest thing our current form of government could be doing is investing a bunch of money into spinning up crown corps to kick start our industry, healthcare, and infrastructure. We already have a system in place, we just need to use it. I think cooperation with China is also the right track. While Trump might bluster about it, I can’t see him actually trying to invade Canada. Ultimately, even with Venezuela, nothing much happened side from Maduro kidnapping so far. I think Trump is very averse to getting mired in another long war like Ukraine.
I would love for more investment into the public sphere but the provinces are annoying. I can’t see places like Alberta further investing in healthcare when they are purposefully privatizing everything.
Trump does talk a big game but is very slow to follow through fully, which is not a bad thing.
Completely agree, Our whole system of governance is basically designed to prevent the government from doing any sort of sustained planning at scale. It’s incredibly frustrating to watch.
And I really think Trump’s whole strategy right now is to apply maximum pressure to other countries, and then see who responds with weakness. If he sees countries resisting the moves on to softer targets, if they don’t he starts demanding more.