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).
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’.