Carney Blasts Trump's Greenland Ambitions at Davos as Allies Fracture

Mark Carney stood at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday and named what he saw happening: not a transition between administrations, but a rupture. The Canadian Prime Minister was speaking into a moment of genuine fracture among Western allies, one that had crystallized around Donald Trump's push to annex Greenland, a Danish territory, and the tariffs he was deploying to force compliance.

Carney's language was precise and cutting. "Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration," he said. "But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited." He was describing a world in which the machinery of trade and finance—the very systems built to bind nations together—had become instruments of subordination. "You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination," he concluded, to applause.

The context for his words was stark. Days earlier, Trump had announced a fresh round of tariffs targeting European allies, explicitly framing them as pressure to support his Greenland ambitions. On the same Tuesday that Carney spoke, Trump shared a social media post claiming NATO posed a greater threat to America than Russia or China. He had sent a letter to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre suggesting he could seize Greenland by force if denied the Nobel Peace Prize. He had circulated memes showing himself planting an American flag on Greenland and sitting in the Oval Office beside maps with the U.S. flag superimposed over both Canada and Greenland. The president had also repeatedly floated the idea of Canada becoming the fifty-first state.

Carney's response was unambiguous. "We stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland's future," he said. Canada, he added, "strongly opposes" tariffs deployed over the territory. The country was already moving to hedge its bets, having signed a deal with China for low-cost electric vehicles the previous week. The European Union, for its part, had halted approval of a trade agreement it had struck with the United States the previous summer.

The Canadian government was taking the threat seriously enough to prepare for contingencies. The Globe and Mail reported that the Canadian Armed Forces had modeled a hypothetical U.S. military invasion and mapped out potential responses—unconventional warfare involving small groups of irregular forces, ambushes, sabotage, drone operations, and hit-and-run tactics. Canada was also considering deploying troops to Greenland as a show of solidarity with Denmark. Carney himself referenced this commitment at Davos, speaking of Canada working with NATO allies to secure "the alliance's northern and western flanks, including through boots on the ground, boots on the ice."

Carney was not alone in his criticism. French President Emmanuel Macron spoke at Davos the same day of a world descending into lawlessness, where "international law is trampled underfoot, and where the only laws that seem to matter are of the strongest, and where imperial ambitions are resurfacing." Macron explicitly named Trump's tariffs as "fundamentally unacceptable, especially when they are used as leverage against territorial sovereignty." He posted later on X: "We prefer science to conspiracy theories, rule of law to rule of force, dialogue to threats."

Trump, speaking at the White House on Tuesday to mark the anniversary of his return to office, dismissed the criticism and doubled down. He complained that NATO was not treating America fairly, questioned whether allies would come to America's aid, and expressed that he had "lost a lot of respect for Norway" over the Nobel Prize. When asked how far he would go to acquire Greenland, he said simply: "You'll find out." During his Davos speech, he referred to Greenland as "Iceland" multiple times and lamented that "they won't give it," threatening to "remember" if Denmark refused. He also took a direct shot at Carney: "Canada gets a lot of freebies from us. They should be grateful also but they're not. I watched your prime minister yesterday, he wasn't so grateful. But they should be grateful to us. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements."

What was unfolding was not a negotiation but a test of whether the post-World War II order—built on rules, alliances, and the principle that great powers would not simply seize territory from smaller neighbors—could hold. Trump's administration had already moved decisively in the Western Hemisphere, with U.S. military forces capturing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro earlier in the month and effectively placing the U.S. in charge of the South American nation. Trump had even shared a social media post identifying himself as the "Acting President of Venezuela." Now his attention had turned northward, and America's closest allies were preparing for the possibility that his ambitions might extend beyond Greenland.