‘Canada lives because of the US’: Trump calls neighbour ‘ungrateful’, warns Mark Carney

US President Donald Trump

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday accused Canada of being “ungrateful” to the United States, claiming the country survives because of American security and economic support.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump said Canada receives “a lot of freebies” from the US but fails to show appreciation in return.

“Our Golden Dome will protect Canada. Canada should be grateful to us, but they are not. I watched your Prime Minister yesterday. He wasn’t very grateful. Keep this in mind next time you make a statement,” Trump said, referring to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

The remarks amounted to a sharp rebuke of Carney and came just hours after the Canadian leader delivered a sweeping foreign policy address in Davos, warning that the US-led global order is undergoing a fundamental breakdown marked by rising great-power rivalry and the erosion of a rules-based system.

Carney’s 40-minute speech earlier on Wednesday argued that the post-Cold War “rules-based international order” has fractured beyond repair. He urged middle powers, including Canada, to stop “living within a lie” about global governance and instead build new coalitions capable of resisting economic coercion by major powers.

“Let me be direct: we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” Carney said at the World Economic Forum. “Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics laid bare the risks of extreme global integration.”

“For decades, countries like Canada benefited from what was called the rules-based international order,” he said. “We joined its institutions. We praised its principles. We benefited from its predictability.”

But, Carney added, “we knew the story… was partially false.”

“The strongest would exempt themselves when convenient,” he said, arguing that “trade rules were enforced asymmetrically” and that international law was applied “with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or its victim.”

Carney warned that economic integration itself has increasingly been weaponised.

“More recently, great powers began using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited,” he said.

“You cannot ‘live within the lie’ of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination,” Carney added, pointing to the weakening of multilateral institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the United Nations and global climate forums. “The architecture of collective problem-solving is greatly diminished.”

He said middle powers could no longer pretend the old system still works and must build new frameworks that reflect current realities. Outlining recent Canadian initiatives, including higher defence spending and new trade and security partnerships, Carney framed the shift as a move toward what he called “values-based realism.”

“We participated in the rituals,” Carney said. “And we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.”

He added that Canada is now “taking the sign out of the window” and acting accordingly.