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U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent escalated his war of words with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Wednesday, urging the former central banker to \u201cdo what he thinks is best for the Canadian people, not his own virtue signaling,\u201d as he recounted a tense post-Davos exchange, with fallout mounting from Carney\u2019s remarkable speech at the World Economic Forum meeting about a \u201crupture\u201d in the world order.? <\/p>\n
Speaking in Washington, D.C., with CNBC\u2019s Sara Eisen in a Squawk on the Street<\/em> interview on the sidelines of the administration\u2019s Trump Accounts Summit, Bessent said he was a participant on the follow-up call after Davos between Carney and President Donald Trump. This talk has been portrayed very differently in Ottawa and Washington, with Carney suggesting he \u201cdug in\u201d and reinforced his message to Trump, while Bessent contends the Canadian leader \u201cwalked back\u201d what he said onstage in Davos.<\/p>\n \u201cI was on the call,\u201d Bessent said, before launching into an unusually personal critique of Carney\u2019s political pivot from technocrat to elected leader. \u201cIn my investment career, I\u2019ve seen what happens when a technocrat tries to pivot and become a politician\u2014never really works out well.\u201d?<\/p>\n Carney rolled his eyes in Ottawa when presented with Bessent\u2019s remarks and bluntly declared: \u201cTo be absolutely clear, and I said this to the president, I meant what I said in Davos,\u201d he told reporters en route to a cabinet meeting. \u201cCanada was the first country to understand the change in U.S. trade policy that [Trump] initiated, and we\u2019re responding to that.\u201d He said he also explained Canada\u2019s arrangement with China to Trump, that it\u2019s striking 12 new deals over four continents in six months, and that Trump \u201cwas impressed.\u201d<\/p>\n Bessent framed Carney\u2019s posture toward Trump as more about branding than national interest, accusing the prime minister of rising to power on \u201can anti-American, anti-Trump message\u201d that could backfire with the United States\u2013Mexico\u2013Canada Agreement (USMCA) up for renegotiation. \u201cThat\u2019s not a great place to be when you\u2019re negotiating with an economy that is multiple [times] larger than you are and your big, biggest trading partner. In the end, I think we will end up in a good place, may not be a straight line.\u201d<\/p>\n Bessent threw in a sharper warning, too: \u201cI would not pick a fight going into USMCA to score some cheap political points. Either you are working for your own political career or you\u2019re working for the Canadian people.\u201d? Carney, of course, ran and won on a platform that was openly critical of Trump-style politics, so reiterating that stance is more akin to him following a democratic mandate by doing what he told voters he would do.<\/p>\n Bessent\u2019s comments underscore Washington\u2019s view that Ottawa has far more to lose if political theater around Trump overshadows the hard math of cross-border commerce. By emphasizing the size gap between the two economies and Canada\u2019s reliance on U.S. market access, he signaled any deterioration in personal or political relations could show up quickly at the negotiating table.?<\/p>\n His remarks also link the Davos dustup to a broader critique of allied leaders Bessent sees as prioritizing image over outcomes, echoing his separate attack on European governments for, in his telling, putting trade and cheap Russian energy ahead of ending the war in Ukraine. That pattern, Bessent suggested, leaves U.S. partners exposed when the United States is prepared to wield tariffs and market access as leverage.? <\/p>\n The day after Bessent\u2019s remarks\u2014and Carney\u2019s response\u2014there was another bit of either virtue signaling or standing up to America, depending on one\u2019s perspective. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz hailed the EU in a speech to his national parliament as an \u201calternative to imperialism and autocracy,\u201d while defending Germany\u2019s record against criticisms from Trump it has not lived up to its NATO commitments by fighting alongside the U.S. often enough. Noting 59 German troops died in Afghanistan during the country\u2019s nearly 20-year deployment, he offered an indirect response to a recent Trump interview when the U.S. president said the other 31 nations in\u00a0NATO stayed \u201ca little off the front lines\u201d in Afghanistan. As Merz put it, \u201cWe will not allow this deployment, which we also performed in the interest of our ally, the United States of America, to be disparaged and demeaned today.\u201d<\/p>\n For Carney, who has built his political brand partly in contrast to Trump, the clash presents a dilemma: continuing to project distance from the U.S. president may play well with segments of the Canadian electorate, but Bessent is betting that strategy will look less sustainable once USMCA talks begin in earnest. His language\u2014\u201ccheap political points,\u201d \u201cvirtue signaling\u201d\u2014was aimed squarely at portraying Carney as more focused on optics than on securing the best economic deal for Canada.?<\/p>\n Bessent, for his part, cast Trump as willing to use U.S. economic heft unapologetically, from tariffs on South Korea over a stalled trade ratification to public frustration with Europe and India over Russian oil. Against that backdrop, his message to Ottawa was blunt: The Davos drama may be good politics at home, but in the coming trade talks, the U.S. intends to remember who picked the fight.?<\/p>\n This story was originally featured on Fortune.com<\/p>\n #Bessent #accuses #Carney #virtue #signaling #big #speech #Davos #divorce #Canada #America #air<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[7138,1417,301,494,237,826,10319,9404,8086,488,11091,5774,491,4395,11090],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17137"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}‘Virtue signaling’ and USMCA warning<\/h2>\n
Domestic politics on both sides<\/h2>\n