Mark Carney: New Canadian PM says Donald Trump wants ‘our country’ in victory speech

Mark Carney, soon to become Canada’s new prime minister, is a two-time central banker and crisis fighter about to face his biggest challenge of all: steering Canada through Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The Liberals announced Carney as Justin Trudeau’s successor on Sunday after party members voted.

Carney who is expected to assume the role of prime minister temporarily and lead his party in much anticipated elections in a few weeks wasted no time making Donald Trump a focus of his attention.

Mr Carney delivered a victory speech and told Canadians they “cannot’ let Mr Trump succeed in actions against it”, adding the United States wanted “our country”.

“The Americans want our resources, our water, our land, our country,” Mr Carney said.

The newly elected PM said Mr Trump was “attacking Canadian workers, families, and businesses. We cannot let him succeed.”

In the trade war with the US, he intends to continue Trudeau’s course of resolute resistance.

Trudeau resigned in January, facing low approval ratings after nearly a decade in power.

“Make no mistake, this is a nation-defining moment. Democracy is not a given. Freedom is not a given. Even Canada is not a given,” Trudeau said.

Trudeau must set a date with Carney for the handover of government affairs and formally resign.

The 59-year-old Carney is a political outsider who has never held office, which would in normal times have killed off his candidacy.

But distance from Trudeau and a high-profile banking career played to his advantage and Carney argues he is the only person prepared to handle the US president.

“I know how to manage crises ... in a situation like this, you need experience in terms of crisis management, you need negotiating skills,” Carney said during a leadership debate late last month.

Donald Trump’s trade war and his talk of making Canada the 51st US state have infuriated Canadians, who are booing the American anthem at ice hockey and basketball games.

Carney attended Harvard where he played college level ice hockey, starring as a goalkeeper.

He will soon be the first person to become Canadian prime minister without being a legislator and without having had any cabinet experience.

He argues Canada must fight Trump’s tariffs with dollar for dollar retaliation and diversify trading relations in the medium term.

In the next election, which must be held by October 20, the Liberals will face off against the official opposition Conservatives.

Carney is a globetrotter who spent 13 years at Goldman Sachs before being named deputy governor of the Bank of Canada in 2003.

He left in November 2004 for a top finance ministry job and returned to become governor of the central bank in 2008 at the age of just 42.

Carney won praise for his handling of the financial crisis, when he created new emergency loan facilities and gave unusually explicit guidance on keeping rates at record low levels for a specific period of time.

The Bank of England was impressed enough though to poach him in 2013, making him the first non-British governor in the central bank’s three-century history, and the first person to ever head two G7 central banks.

Britain’s finance minister at the time, George Osborne, called Carney the “outstanding central bank governor of his generation”.

Carney, though, had a challenging time, forced to face zero inflation and the political chaos of Brexit.

When sterling tumbled in the hours after the Brexit referendum result in 2016, Carney delivered a televised address to reassure markets the bank would turn on the liquidity taps if needed.

“Mark has a rare ability to combine a central banker’s steady hand, with a political reformer’s eye to the future,” said Ana Botin, Santander’s executive chairman, in a written comment to Reuters.

She said Carney “steadied the ship” in the UK after Brexit.

But he infuriated Brexit supporters by talking about the economic damage he said was likely to be caused by leaving the European Union.

Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg called him the “high priest of project fear” but Carney said it was his duty to talk about such risks.

After leaving the Bank of England in 2020, Carney served as a United Nations envoy on finance and climate change.

He also served on the board of Brookfield Asset Management and was chair of the Bloomberg board but resigned as the UN special envoy and left all commercial posts after he launched his bid for the Liberal leadership on January 16.

with DPA.