Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney.
| Photo Credit: AP
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday (January 27, 2026) said he spoke to U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday (January 26, 2026) but denied he had retracted comments last week that irritated the U.S. President.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that during the call, Mr. Carney “was very aggressively walking back” some of the remarks he made during a speech in Davos in which he urged nations to accept the end of a rules-based global order.
Mr. Carney — citing U.S. tariffs on key Canadian imports — is pushing to diversify trade away from the United States, which takes around 70% of all Canadian exports.
Mr. Trump reacted unhappily to Mr. Carney’s Davos speech, saying Canada only existed because of the United States, and later said he would impose a 100% tariff on Canadian imports if Ottawa concluded a trade deal with China.
“To be absolutely clear, and I said this to the President — I meant what I said in Davos,” Mr. Carney told reporters.
The U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade deal is due to be reviewed later this year, a process that Mr. Carney says might explain some of the comments Trump has made recently.
Mr. Carney said he told Mr. Trump that Canada was responding to the tariffs by “building partnerships abroad … (and) building at home, and we’re prepared to respond positively by building that new relationship through USMCA. He understood that”.
As Mr. Carney walked away, reporters asked specifically whether he had walked back the Davos comments during the conversation. “No,” he replied.
Published – January 28, 2026 06:54 am IST
