Mark Carney rises to address world leaders, businessmen and bankers at the World Economic Forum. 

As the Canadian Prime Minister, he has faced constant attack from the US President Donald Trump with Trump stating that “they should be grateful to us, Canada. Canada lives because of the United States”.

Internationally things are heating up, Trump’s America is involved in wars in Gaza, occupying Venezuela, threatening to disband NATO by forcefully taking Greenland, Iran is in civil unrest and America is threatening strikes, the war in Ukraine is still ongoing and trump seemingly wants Ukraine to surrender land as the ‘only viable option’ for peace. He references Vaclav Havel’s essay: ‘The power the powerless in which it is proposed that the only way to bring down an oppressive state and challenge it is for the people to stop believing in its lies and engaging with its systems using one such example of a greengrocer placing a sign in his window stating “workers unite” in soviet states. Not because he believes it but rather as compliance with the state and only when they defy the state by taking the sign out of the window will anything change. 

“We know that the rules based order is fading, the strong can do what they can and the weak must suffer” Trump has been throwing tariffs on any nation that challenges his perspective, since the end of WW2 Nato has served as a harbour for European and international powers for peace and prosperity and with potential attacks on Greenland the US is possibly going to bring an end to the alliance. His speech serves as a call to action for the middle powers and neighbours of larger powers (the UK, Canada, Mexico, lots of eastern Europe) to band together in a trade bloc against Russia China and the US in-order to demand more equality away from the three modern superpowers. 

The stance Mark Carney takes opposes the stance trump takes on public forums. His speech is careful, considered and most importantly, pragmatic. Carney isn’t directly placing the blame on any nation or asking specifically for help and partnership but rather is dog whistling to smaller nations that nothing will change unless we band together, speaking on global issues at a global forum; compare it to trump’s speech at the same forum and it’s like night and day. The first statement that leaves his mouth “I’ve come to this world economic forum with great news from America” and continues on a monologue about his perceived achievements on home soil, very little time is actually dedicated towards international issues at the WORLD economic forum. We see this in all of Trumps international appearances, you only have to harken back to his speech at the UN where he does the same tactic: speak on domestic issues at an international forum bringing the attention onto him rather than issues that actually matter. 

Carney and Trump’s speeches are direct mirrors of one-another; pragmatic and focused and rambling/egotistical people onlooking them can only hope that there are more world leaders upcoming with the stance of foreign policy that Mr Carney has. 

People find solidarity in groups and are more confident when they know people agree with them, so as protests rage on in the US over ICE and the killing of innocent civilians and Trump’s presidency you can only ask; are the greengrocers taking their signs out of the window?