Canada's Carney fires back at Trump after Davos speech

ROB GILLIES
Thu, January 22, 2026 

Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks at the beginning of a Cabinet Planning Forum at the Citadelle in Quebec City, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (Jacques Boissinot /The Canadian Press via AP)(ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Prime Minister Mark Carney, right, and Bonhomme Carnaval raise their legs together in a traditional carnival kick, at the beginning of a Cabinet planning forum at the Citadelle in Quebec City, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026.(Jacques Boissinot /The Canadian Press via AP)(ASSOCIATED PRESS

TORONTO (AP) — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney responded to U.S. President Donald Trump comment that “Canada lives because of the United States” on Thursday by saying Canada thrives because of Canadian values.

Carney said Canada can show the world that the future doesn’t have to be autocratic after returning from Davos where he gave a speech that garnered widespread attention.

In Davos at the World Economic Forum, Carney condemned coercion by great powers on smaller countries without mentioning Trump's name.

Upon returning home to Canada, Carney responded to Trump directly by referencing Trump’s remarks in Davos.

“Canada lives because of the United States,” Trump said. “Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”

“Canada doesn’t live because of the United States. Canada thrives because we are Canadian,” Carney responded Thursday.

Carney said Canada and the U.S. have built a remarkable partnership in the areas of economy, security and rich cultural exchange, but said “we are masters in our home, this is our own country, it’s our future, the choice is up to us.”

Trump later revoked his invitation to Carney to join his Board of Peace.

“Dear Prime Minister Carney: Please let this Letter serve to represent that the Board of Peace is withdrawing its invitation to you regarding Canada’s joining, what will be, the most prestigious Board of Leaders ever assembled, at any time,” Trump posted on social media.

Carney left Davos before Trump inaugurated his Board of Peace to lead efforts at maintaining a ceasefire in Israel’s war with Hamas.


Trump has talked about making Canada the 51st state and posted this week an altered image of a map of the U.S. that includes Canada, Greenland, Venezuela and Cuba as part of its territory.

Trump said in Davos that Canada gets many “freebies” from the U.S. and “should be grateful.” He said Carney’s Davos speech showed he “wasn’t so grateful.”

Trump said Canada wants to participate in “Golden Dome” — a multibillion dollar missile defense system that he says will be operational before his term ends in 2029.

In a speech before a cabinet retreat in Quebec City, Carney said staying true to Canada’s values is key to maintaining its sovereignty.

“We can show that another way is possible, that the arc of history isn’t destined to be warped toward authoritarianism and exclusion; it can still bend toward progress and justice,” Carney said.

Carney said “Canada must be a beacon — an example to a world at sea.”

Carney said in a time of rising populism and ethnic nationalism, Canada can show how diversity is a strength, not a weakness.

“There are billions of people who aspire to what we have built: a pluralistic society that works," Carney said.

He said Canada delivers shared prosperity and has a democracy that chooses to protect the vulnerable against the powerful.

"It’s a great country for everyone. It is the greatest country in the world to be a regular person. You don’t have to be born rich, or to a landed family. You don’t have to be a certain color or worship a certain god,” he said.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick earlier complained about Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum.

“Give me a break,” Lutnick said on Bloomberg TV. “They have the second best deal in the world and all I got to do is listen to this guy whine and complain."

Canada has been shielded from the worst impacts of Trump’s tariffs by the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on trade, known as USMCA, but the agreement is up for a mandatory review this year.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, told the forum that multiple leaders in the United States sent him transcripts of Carney’s speech.

“I respect what Carney did because he had courage of convictions. He stood up and I think we need to stand up in America and call this out with clarity,” Newsom said.

“We can lose our republic as we know it. Our country can become unrecognizable."

Newsom said that fact that Carney came back from China with a deal to introduce low, cost high quality electric vehicles into Canada, not made from Michigan, but from overseas shows how reckless Trump’s foreign policy is.

“It’s a remarkable thing to break down 80-plus years of alliances,” he said.

Trump revokes Canada's invitation to join Board of Peace

REUTERS
Thu, January 22, 2026


FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a reception with business leaders at the 56th annual World Economic Forum (WEF), in Davos, Switzerland, January 21, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

By Jasper Ward and Ismail Shakil

WASHINGTON/OTTAWA, Jan 22 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew on Thursday an invitation for Canada to join his Board of Peace initiative ​aimed at resolving global conflicts.

Trump's aboutface follows Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech at ‌the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he openly decried powerful nations using economic integration as weapons and tariffs as ‌leverage.

"Please let this Letter serve to represent that the Board of Peace is withdrawing its invitation to you regarding Canada’s joining, what will be, the most prestigious Board of Leaders ever assembled, at any time," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post directed at Carney.

Neither Carney's office nor the White ⁠House immediately responded to Reuters requests ‌for comment on Thursday evening.

Last week, Carney's office said he had been invited to serve on the board and planned to accept.

Carney received a rare ‍standing ovation in Davos after the speech, in which he urged nations to accept the end of a rules-based global order.

Canada, which recently signed a trade deal with China, can show how "middle powers" might act together ​to avoid being victimized by American hegemony, he added.

Trump retorted that Canada "lives because of the United ‌States," and told listeners in Davos that Carney should be grateful for the United States’ previous largesse.

"Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements," he added, addressing Carney directly.

The withdrawal of Canada's invitation came hours after Trump officially launched the board, which was initially meant to cement a Gaza ceasefire.

Permanent members must help fund the board with a payment of $1 billion each, ⁠according to Trump.

"Once this board is completely formed, we ​can do pretty much whatever we want to do," Trump ​said in Switzerland on Thursday. "And we'll do it in conjunction with the United Nations.

The board's establishment was endorsed by a United Nations Security Council resolution as ‍part of Trump's Gaza peace ⁠plan, and U.N. spokesperson Rolando Gomez said on Thursday that U.N. engagement with the board would only be in that context.

Member nations include Argentina, Bahrain, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey. ⁠Other U.S. allies, such as Britain, France and Italy, have indicated they will not join for now.

(Reporting by Jasper ‌Ward in Washington and Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Additional reporting by Kanishka Singh; Editing ‌by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Sergio Non and Clarence Fernandez)

 

Time for Europe to Use the Nuclear Option: 

Attack U.S. Patent and Copyright Monopolies

Dean Baker

 January 22, 2026

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Donald Trump does not appear to be backing down from his obsession with seizing a big chunk of real estate in the form of Greenland. He now is set on whacking American consumers with another big tax hike in the form of $75 billion in tariffs on imports from the European countries most vigorously defending the status quo with Greenland and Denmark.

To be clear, contrary to what you read in the newspaper, these tariffs are taxes on us, not the exporting country. That fact might be too complicated for Donald Trump and little children, but we are the ones who pay the tariff. Losing some of their export market is a negative for the countries targeted, but at this point everyone in the world understands that the United States is no longer a reliable market and has made plans to adjust this reality.

But Trump is not likely to stop with his tariffs. Just as he can’t acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election, by a big margin, he can’t accept that Greenland does not belong to him. He is a seriously demented man who has decided he wants Greenland and has to have it.

Europe is struggling to find a way to respond effectively. There are discussions of imposing tariffs on U.S. exports, which can inflict some pain on U.S. companies, but probably not enough to matter to Trump. And just as Trump’s tariffs hit U.S. consumers, European tariffs will make things less affordable for hard-pressed families.

There is a simple alternative that is likely to be more effective in getting attention here and would actually help Europe’s consumers. European countries can announce that they will no longer honor US owned patents and copyrights.

That will very quickly get the attention of consumer product companies like Apple, which depends on thousands of patents for its iPhones and other products, and earns over a hundred billion annually. Similarly, software companies like Oracle (as in right-wing billionaire Larry Ellison) and Microsoft depend on patent and copyrights to make their leading shareholders incredibly rich. Entertainment outfits like Disney and Paramount (also owned by the Ellison clan) depend almost entirely on copyright monopolies as the basis for their billions of dollars in annual earnings.

Putting U.S. patents and copyrights on the line is a guaranteed attention grabber. The vast fortunes of the sleaze buckets who put Trump into the White House and back his attack on democracy in the United States and around the world will suddenly be thrown into question.

There is even precedent for going this route. In World War I, the United States stopped honoring German patents and instead instituted a system of compulsory licensing. Under this system, anyone could freely use a German patent for a small fee. European countries can go a similar route in response to a U.S. government that says it has no use for international law.

Not only will the patent/copyright route inflict far more pain on the big actors in Donald Trump’s America, in contrast to the tariff route, it will offer real gains for the people of Europe. Imagine everyone being able to get iPhones at less than half their current price, free or near free Microsoft software, and the latest Disney and Paramount productions at zero cost. This is genuinely a case where everyone can gain from free trade: eliminating patent and copyright monopolies.

This move also exposes the Big Lie of economic policy of the last half century. There has been a massive upward redistribution of income over this period. There is more the case in the United States than in Europe, but income has also shifted upward there as well. That has contributed to the rise of right-wing populism in Europe.

The Big Lie is that the upward redistribution was the natural workings of the market. The claim is that the course of technology and globalization just turned out to benefit the more educated segments of the population, and especially those at the very top.

That is a lie since there is nothing natural about the government-granted patent and copyright monopolies that play a huge role in this upward redistribution. Governments could have made these monopolies shorter and weaker rather than longer and stronger, or even relied more on other mechanisms to support innovation and creative work.

There were other ways in which government actions redistributed income upward, but that is a longer discussion that can be dealt with elsewhere. The key point is that European countries by opting to not respect U.S. patents and copyrights, have an incredibly powerful weapon to use against Donald Trump and his rich supporters. The time has come for them to go nuclear.

This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog. 

Dean Baker is the senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. 

WORD OF THE DAY

Predation Without Apology: 

Trump Defrocks the Long 

Western Tradition

L. Ali Khan

 January 22, 2026

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The Trump predation does not mark a departure from Western history; it signals the end of its traditional justifications. For centuries, Western ruling elites relied on intricate theological and philosophical frameworks to justify predation—the taking of foreign resources through force, deception, or coercion. During President Donald Trump’s tenure, these frameworks are no longer necessary. Predation persists, but its rhetorical disguise has been stripped away. What remains is the U.S. asymmetric power advantage, openly asserting itself against weaker targets like Venezuela, while remaining cautious around stronger foes like China.

To understand Trump’s predatory stance toward Venezuela, Greenland, and possibly other targets, one must resist the urge to see it as abnormal. Trump’s actions make perfect sense when viewed within the long Western tradition where predation repeatedly overshadowed the opposition of each era. Medieval Christianity, the Enlightenment, and international law all claimed universal authority. None of these systems managed to stop Western ruling elites, the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the French, the Dutch, or the English, particularly when their unequal power allowed them to prey on the weak, the core logic of predation that humans learn from natural law.

This commentary (a summary of a larger work in progress) offers historical context of predation, not to criticize Western nations or defend President Trump, but to present evidence that for centuries, predation has been a major paradigm shaping Western relations with weaker countries blessed with natural resources. The idea that all nations are predators and that singling out select Western nations is analytical bias is not part of this work in progress or this commentary.

Divine Predation

Western predation was initially sanctified by theology. Medieval Christian rulers did not present themselves as thieves, but as agents of divine order executing a sacred mandate. Papal instruments such as Romanus Pontifex did not merely bless conquest; they reclassified non-Christian lands as lacking legitimate moral and spiritual ownership, rendering seizure lawful in advance. This theological justification later hardened into legal concepts, such as terra nullius, that stripped target populations of standing altogether, turning dispossession from a crime into an act of rectification.

This Christian logic established a durable precedent in the West for centuries: when the target resources in West Africa or the Americas are held by non-Christians, predation is s lawful, a predatory theology that the Portuguese and the Spaniards exploited fully. Trump’s dismissal of Venezuelan sovereignty follows the same structure, though stripped of religious language. Where papal bulls once declared lands empty of God, Trump’s predation treats certain states as empty of legitimacy.

Enlightenment Predation

The Enlightenment that emerged to correct the medieval superstitions did not dismantle predation; it rationalized it. Thinkers such as James Mill and John Stuart Mill provided philosophical grammar for imperial domination. James Mill’s claim that India under the Mughal Empire was stagnant and irrational justified British rule first through a trading company, later directly. John Stuart Mill’s famous defense of libertyexplicitly excluded “barbarian” societies, for whom despotism was deemed a legitimate instrument of improvement.

The Enlightenment arguments replaced divine command with developmental hierarchy. Predation was no longer the will of God but the white man’s burden to help unfortunate nations to progress. Resources were seized not because they were desired, but because natives were allegedly incapable of using them properly. This reasoning survives intact in modern economic discourse, where sanctions, privatization, and regime change are framed as necessary steps toward rational governance.

Trump does not repudiate this civilization tradition; he abbreviates it. Rather than invoking development or civilization, he reduces the logic to its core: “They have it. We want it. We can take it.” The argument that if the U.S. runs Venezuela, the Venezuelans would be better off is a sort of Enlightenment argument, but its importance is secondary to the America First principle that Trump espouses without any moral twisting.

Pedagogy of Violence

Alexis de Tocqueville holds a significant place in the Western history of predation. Known for his praise of American democracy, Tocqueville also supported extreme violence in colonial Algeria. He justified the destruction of Algerian villages, crops, and livelihoods as necessary actions against populations who only understood force. This was not a contradiction; it was a fundamental insight. Liberal institutions built on liberty and rights benefit Western nations, while domination remains essential for non-Western nations, which President Trump boldly calls “shitholes.”

Trump has added tough language to the pedagogy of violence, overriding the American tradition of “speak softly and carry a big stick.”

Yet, Trump’s foreign policy follows a distinctly Tocquevillian bifurcation. Constitutional protections and democratic norms function as domestic privileges for select communities rather than universal constraints. Beyond the national boundary, overwhelming force—economic or military—is treated not only as permissible but as instructive. Sanctions that devastate civilian populations are justified as pressure mechanisms, largely indifferent to humanitarian cost. Like Tocqueville’s defense of razzias in Algeria, suffering becomes instrumental: violence is not an aberration but a teaching method applied to those deemed incapable of persuasion, whether labeled barbarians or rogue regimes.

International Law Promise

After two devastating world wars, mainly fought in Europe, twentieth-century international law promised a break from predatory behavior. Sovereignty, territorial integrity, and non-intervention, enshrined in the United Nations Charter, were supposed to be universal principles binding on all nations. Ironically, these norms were established by the same Western powers that have systemically engaged in predation.

International law began to break apart as soon as it was promised, acting more like a filter than a barrier: it restricts weaker states while granting stronger states interpretive flexibility to create loopholes in its enforcement.

Trump has dispensed with the pretense of interpreting international law to justify predation. “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me. I don’t need international law,” is the frank admission of a person who sees no profit in dishonest morality. Where some states violate international law while affirming its authority, Trump treats it as an irrelevant game-playing. The legality of sanctions, asset seizures, or threats of force matters less than their enforceability. This posture is shocking only to those who confuse legal language with legal power.

Venezuela: Amoral Predation

Venezuela represents the clearest case of predation in the Trump era. Venezuela, with the world’s largest proven oil reserves, also lacked the military, financial, and diplomatic capacity to resist the U.S. power advantage. This asymmetry made predation viable. Sanctions degrade the economy, delegitimize leadership, and transfer control over national assets abroad. Claims that Venezuelan oil “belongs” to U.S. companies echo colonial arguments that natives lack proper title to their own resources.

In every era, Western scholars opposed what they witnessed. For example, Bartolomé de las Casasopposed the Spanish cruelty in the Americas. Even in the Trump times, scholarly opposition is immediate and robust. International law scholars, like Professor Craig Martin, cite prohibitions on intervention and on the seizure of resources. Economists warn of a humanitarian catastrophe. Yet none of this alters the predation policy. As in earlier eras, scholarly critique fails not because it is intellectually deficient, but because it is irrelevant to decision-makers insulated by asymmetric power advantaged over adversaries and driven to seize assets in foreign lands.

Trump Difference

Trump’s significance lies not in innovation but in disclosure. He reveals that the long Western tradition of predation no longer requires moral camouflage. His declaration that only his own morality constrains his actions echoes the implicit doctrine of every predatory elite before him. The difference is unarming honesty. Where William the Conqueror spoke of inheritance in seizing England in 1066, and James Mill spoke of utilitarian happiness to justify colonialism, Trump speaks the language of “I can do it.”

This candor unsettles observers and ahistorical moralists because it exposes a continuity many do not know, hide, or prefer to deny. Faith, reason, and law have not failed ‘recently’; they have always failed in the algorithms of the Western ruling elites. Trump merely refuses to pretend otherwise.

It is historically instructive that the same Western countries that remained silent or hesitant about Trump’s actions in Venezuela are now upset over Greenland. This makes sense because, in the case of Greenland, Trump’s action hits at the core of the Western world, making the pain feel more real than distant.

Conclusion

 A brief view of history presented in this commentary supports a grim conclusion. Predation recedes only when power asymmetry collapses—when targets acquire deterrent power, competitors impose costs, or resistance raises acquisition risks. Moral systems, much less law, do not defeat predation; power does. Trump’s era is therefore not a moral low point but a diagnostic moment. It shows Western predation operating without disguise, apology, or metaphysical cover.

In this sense, Trump does not corrupt Western values. He demonstrates their operational limits. If all you have is the law to defend your resources, warns history, you show little respect for the Western tradition of predation.

L. Ali Khan is the founder of Legal Scholar Academy and an Emeritus Professor of Law at the Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas. He welcomes comments at legal.scholar.academy@gmail.com.