The
Sunday read
Mark
Carney
‘You’re
at war when you get attacked’: Mark Carney shows combative nature in face-off
with Trump
Leyland
Cecco in Toronto, Heather Stewart and Kalyeena Makortoff in London
The
Canadian PM is one of the few world leaders to stand up to the US president.
Former colleagues say they are not surprised
Sun 30
Aug 2026 06.00 BST
Mark
Carney stood before a walnut-veneered lectern, his face drawn tight, as he
announced that talks with Canada’s biggest trading partner had collapsed. “Last
spring, I warned that America is trying to break us so that they can own us,”
he said. “And I promised: that will never, ever happen. We are keeping that
promise.”
For
years, the former central bank governor had worked hard to calm markets. Now,
he was asking Canadians to accept uncertainty and confrontation.
Near the
end of the press conference last Saturday, a reporter made reference to the
sombre, combative tone of the speech: “Why does it feel like today Mark Carney
is going to war?”
The prime
minister paused.
“We were
attacked. You’re at war when you get attacked,” he said. “We got attacked.”
The
unlikely transformation of an economist and central banker with no prior
electoral experience into a powerful global politician has bucked precedent and
expectations. But Carney has settled into the role he warned was necessary for
the country, that of a wartime leader standing up to an erratic and vindictive
adversary who seems hellbent on subjugating Canada.
After
trade negotiations with the US broke down, the two sides traded recriminations
and made good on threats to impose new tariffs on each other. In his latest act
of petty antagonism, Trump signed an executive order on Thursday directing the
US federal government to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America”.
But
Carney, in walking away from the proposed deal, did what few other leaders have
done: dared Trump and the US to test his nation’s resolve.
“We
cannot accept what they have offered, and we will not give what they have
asked,” he said.
‘He was
pretty doggedly determined’
For those
who have worked with the demanding – and, at times, temperamental – central
banker, such a calculated refusal to accede to a bad deal comes as little
surprise.
Carney
was raised in Canada’s western prairies, and his story – of an outsider
gradually working his way into, and eventually reshaping, powerful institutions
– offers clues to a man unwilling to accept the terms set by others.
“He was
pretty doggedly determined,” said one person who worked alongside Carney when
he was serving as UN special envoy for climate action in 2021.
When
trying to convince banks to sign up to climate pledges, Carney could turn on
the charm. “He was pretty diplomatic, when dealing with people that he knows
he’s got to influence,” his former colleague said.
But it
has been no shock to see Carney standing up to Trump on the world stage. “It
doesn’t surprise me … and I think it’s because of that determination and that
unwillingness to back down.”
Carney
was not always so sure-footed. When he was handpicked as governor of the Bank
of England in 2013 by the then UK chancellor, George Osborne, Carney’s
hard-driving approach was not a natural fit with the venerable institution in
London’s Square Mile. When he arrived, it still had pink-uniformed, top hatted
guards at the entrance.
The
traits acquired during his days at Goldman Sachs have continued into his tenure
as prime minister. He remains an early riser, a dedicated runner and demands
that ministers know their files front to back, according to those who work with
him. Media have also reported that staff are expected to dress in formal
business attire and documents are to be written using British spelling – to the
frustration of Canadian linguists.
While
Carney’s career in a string of powerful institutions reflects a sharp,
analytical mind, his tenure at the Bank of England telegraphed that the wonkish
economist was also willing to become political when necessary.
When
Carney overhauled the Bank’s communications strategy, introducing “forward
guidance” to show its thinking about future interest rates, it was not
immediately embraced as a success.
The
senior Labour MP Pat McFadden – now a cabinet minister – accused the Bank under
Carney of baffling investors and the public with mixed messages about the
future of interest rates.
In
October 2015, with the referendum looming on whether Britain should leave the
European Union, Carney used a speech at Oxford University to underline the
benefits to the UK of the “economic and financial openness” that came with
membership.
With the
eurozone debt crisis a recent memory, Carney also highlighted the increased
risk of financial instability that membership of the EU implied; but Brexiters
seized on his positive comments as an unwarranted intervention in a highly
politicised topic.
The row
deepened when Carney suggested Brexit might plunge the UK into recession.
Bernard Jenkin, the Conservative director of the leave campaign wrote to the
governor, urging him to butt out.
Carney’s
reply displayed the same relish for a fight that has been evident in his
handling of Trump. “Dear Mr Jenkin,” his letter began, “I am responding to your
letter to dispel immediately the numerous and substantial misconceptions it
contained.” He went on to accuse the veteran MP of “a fundamental
misunderstanding of central bank independence as enshrined in statute”.
In the
event, there was no Brexit recession, something many economists attributed
partly to the Bank’s robust response, including rapid interest rate cuts and
quantitative easing (the emergency bond-buying scheme used during the global
financial crisis).
Charles
Randell spent five years on the board of the Prudential Regulation Authority,
which Carney chaired after becoming Bank of England governor. “I’m sure if you
ring around enough people who worked with him at the Bank, you’ll find people
who will say that he had his shortcomings,” Randall said. “But with time to
reflect on my experience … he’s one of the most impressive people I’ve ever
worked with.”
Randell,
who was then the chair of the Financial Conduct Authority, said that even
behind the scenes, Carney was a “very serious person, very analytical, very
driven” and “very careful about how he communicates”.
“On the
morning after the Brexit vote in 2016 … he went in front of the cameras to
reassure financial markets that the Bank was ready to deal with any of the
consequences of that decision,” he said. “It was a masterpiece in strategic
messaging.”
‘Compliance
will not buy safety’
Joseph
Steinberg, a professor of economics at the University of Toronto, said that
while during the Brexit debate, Carney “did not shy away from trying to tell
kind of the hard economic truths”, he had not spoken much about the economics
of the current US trade war.
“In
public, he is leaning pretty heavily on the sovereignty angle. It is clear that
he privately is probably thinking about the cold, hard economics of an
incredibly tenuous situation.”
Carney’s
decision to retaliate against the US has caused some economists, including
Steinberg, to point out that Canada will take a far more painful blow than the
US.
For the
first time in his career Carney is fully beholden to a wary public, a reality
that underscores the clashing of two personalities: the technocrat who
understands the economics, and the politician who must contend with the
political costs of compromise.
“At the
moment, Canadians are likely to be extraordinarily intolerant of making any
kind of concessions to the US whatsoever, even if they are in our economic best
interest,” he said.
In
January, Carney warned people at Davos that “compliance will not buy safety” in
a world increasingly dominated by hegemonic powers. While it never mentioned
Trump, his speech was seen as a thinly veiled critique of the US president’s
aim to abandon longstanding alliances and reshape the world to his advantage.
One of
Carney’s prescriptions – forging deep relations with like-minded “middle
powers” and restructuring to lessen reliance on former allies – has already
taken shape in Canada, at a speed and degree to which the pollster David
Coletto described as a “wartime-footing government without a war”.
“It’s a
government organised around an external threat that’s willing to suspend its
own party’s orthodoxies, centralise power to move fast, and measure itself in
outcomes rather than values,” he wrote.
Carney
abandoned many of the policies of his predecessor Justin Trudeau, including his
carbon and electric vehicle mandates. He has also fast-tracked large projects,
including an oil pipeline, and invested tens of billions more into defence.
“The
public has hardly blinked,” Coletto said in an interview. “Mark Carney’s
approval rating has just sustained itself through this entire period.”
“When
[Carney] first became prime minister, I was sceptical that a central banker
would be able to respond to public opinion because that is the opposite of
their job,” he said. “But I’ve been surprised with his nuanced read of the
country. He’s been adept at being not just politically effective but in holding
his support together through a trying time. This suggests there’s little value
in underestimating his political instincts.”
Polling
shows that Carney remains the leader Canadians trust most to steer the country
through economic uncertainty. But the prime minister has also embraced a role
that would once have seemed almost incongruous: asking a country vastly smaller
and less powerful than its neighbour to stand its ground.
He said
in his recent address: “Canadians don’t submit to the weather – we thrive in
it. We don’t wait to see which way the wind is blowing. Or surrender ourselves
to the waves to be storm-tossed by events.
“We set
our own course. We make our own weather. In Canada, we are masters in our own
home, from coast to coast to coast.”
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