Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s political ascent was assisted in large part by one man: U.S. President Donald Trump. In early 2025, Trump’s tariff policy and annexationist rhetoric galvanized a nationalist upsurge in Canada, culminating in the electorate’s April 28 rejection of the Trumpian Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and the re-election of the incumbent Liberals, who have been led by Carney since former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation earlier this year.
Carney can talk tough. In March, he declared that Canada’s long relationship with the United States is “over,” citing the economic fallout of Trump’s tariffs. During Trump and Carney’s first joint press conference in early May, Carney made headlines by telling the U.S. President that Canada “won’t be for sale, ever.”
But behind Carney’s image as a cool and collected protector of Canadian sovereignty, a clear pattern has emerged during his first months in office. Instead of challenging Trump on key issues such as climate change, deportations, military spending, and global warmongering, Carney (like previous prime ministers) is quietly capitulating to Washington’s regional and global agenda. These capitulations signal that despite Carney’s claims, Canada’s old relationship with the United States is nowhere near over.
Far from standing up to Trump, Carney has adopted policies designed to placate him. That’s because Carney is fundamentally a status quo man. He believes wholeheartedly in Western military and economic alliances, the free market and capitalist states that promote it, and the ability of large corporations to govern themselves according to “enlightened values.” And that makes Carney uniquely unable to act with the urgency required to stem climate change and global war, and to confront a belligerent and irrational empire-in-decline in the United States.
Carney’s lack of vision and eagerness to capitulate was on full display at the first major international summit he hosted—the G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, between June 15 and 17.
In an article describing Carney’s “quiet courting” of Trump, Politico noted that Canada’s prime minister “carefully crafted the summit’s agenda, avoiding an explicit focus on areas like climate change in favor of sessions addressing migration and energy more likely to encourage engagement from Trump and his team.” At a time when wildfires, intensified by higher yearly temperatures, are raging across the prairie provinces, displacing tens of thousands and burning millions of acres of forest, Carney’s disregard for discussion of climate change is utterly distressing. This is especially true given that G7 members account for 10 percent of the global population but 25 percent of global emissions, meaning the alliance has a particular responsibility to act.
Kevin Cramer, a Republican Senator from North Dakota and longtime Trump ally, told Politico: “I’ve been very impressed with [Carney], and I think Donald Trump is as well.” The news outlet said Cramer—a climate change skeptic and ardent supporter of fossil fuel extraction—is one of the Trump allies whom Carney calls for advice on how to engage with the U.S. President.
A week before the G7 summit, Carney announced that his government would be massively expanding Canadian military spending—another sign of his eagerness to please the Trump Administration. Carney said Canada will meet the 2 percent of GDP spending target pushed by Washington and NATO, committing $9 billion in new funding for the Department of National Defence over the next ten months.
Carney’s rapid increase of arms spending, says Politico, is specifically aimed at “addressing one of Trump’s chief complaints about his Western allies”—that they don’t spend enough money on weapons of war. The announcement had its intended effect. According to U.S. ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra, Carney’s military buildup has “thrilled” Trump.
Carney has tried to portray increased military spending under NATO as a guarantor of Canadian sovereignty. This raises the question: If NATO is a counterbalance to U.S. power, why do NATO wars always serve U.S. geopolitical interests? Why are U.S. politicians and U.S. arms companies so eager for NATO expansion? Why have U.S. Presidents including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump urged greater military spending from NATO members? The reason is this: Washington calls the shots in NATO, and for other members, increased NATO commitments mean deepening integration with the U.S. war machine.
At the June 25 NATO summit, Carney committed to meeting Trump’s new demand of spending 5 percent of its GDP on the military by 2035. This will expand Canada’s military spending to roughly $150 billion, a truly astronomical sum that, if used in a socially rational way, could build more than 400,000 publicly owned housing units, 3,600 schools, or sixty hospitals each year, or create around 1.7 million full-time jobs paying $40 an hour. Instead, Carney is diverting these public funds to the military industry, on behalf of a hostile U.S. President.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte directly praised Trump for pushing Canada and other NATO members to ramp up their arms expenditures. Rutte said, “For too long, one ally, the United States, carried too much of the burden of that commitment, and that changes today.” He told Trump, “You made this change possible.”
By caving to longstanding U.S. demands for higher military spending, Carney is not securing Canadian sovereignty. He is once more bowing to Washington.
Carney is also considering joining Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense system, which will cost Canadian taxpayers $61 billion, and spending $19 billion on U.S.-made F-35 warplanes, whose spare parts will be controlled by the United States.
It is, frankly, outrageous that Carney is spending tens of billions of dollars on machines of war to appease the United States at a time when a growing number of Canadians struggle to secure housing, regular meals, and health care. His military purchases will also exacerbate the climate crisis, as these tools of war are powered by fossil fuels. And given that the Department of National Defence is largely exempt from federal emissions reduction plans—even though National Defence accounts for 60 percent of the Canadian federal government’s emissions—Carney’s military buildup is one more way in which he is abandoning Canadians to appease Donald Trump.
But it doesn’t end there. Carney has also aligned his border policies with those of the Trump Administration. As Desmond Cole writes in The Breach, “For all the talk of a nasty break-up, Canada and the United States are still very much in sync—especially when it comes to shutting the door on refugees.”
Carney’s first border plan, dubbed the Strong Borders Act, echoes Trump’s racist scapegoating of migrants and asylum seekers. Specifically, the bill aims to prevent “sudden increases in claims” by asylum seekers through the introduction of “new ineligibility rules.” As Cole notes: “Carney’s plan paints refugee claimants as a threat to the very system created to support them. This mirrors the U.S. administration’s framing of asylum seekers as dangerous, rather than as people who deserve protection and priority.”
The Migrant Rights Network asserts that Carney’s border plan, much like Trump’s, “aims to create a mass deportation machine.” Among other worrisome features, writes Cole, the Strong Borders Act will “empower government officials to pause accepting new immigration applications—and to alter, suspend, or even throw out existing ones, including refugee applications—if deemed in the public interest.” This could mean that refugee claimants will be denied access to a hearing before deportation. Furthermore, The Breach says Carney’s bill “sets a one-year deadline for claiming refugee status and severely limits the ability of migrants who fail to use official ports of entry from the U.S. to make a refugee claim.”
The bill also seeks to expand the ability of government departments to share the personal information of asylum applicants with other jurisdictions, which would make it easier for provincial and federal agencies to collaborate in tracking migrants targeted for deportation.
On foreign policy, Carney’s positions remain firmly aligned with those of the man who recently asserted he would use “economic force” to annex Canada. Carney continues to identify Russia and China, Washington’s two main foes, as the primary threats to Canadians, and he named those powers as the reasons for his ongoing military buildup.
Carney has remained a firm supporter of Israel during its genocide in Gaza, and has openly supported war against Iran in the aftermath of Israel’s illegal and unprovoked attack on the country on June 13. At the G7, Carney stood silently in apparent agreement beside Trump as the U.S. President rambled about the need for war on Iran.
In short, campaign-trail Carney and Prime Minister Carney are different beasts. Despite his talk about securing Canadian sovereignty vis-à-vis the United States, Carney’s policies will deepen integration between the Canadian and U.S. economies and militaries, and more closely align Canadian immigration policy with that of Trump.
While suppressing climate action and boosting military spending, Carney is also scapegoating migrants and siding with U.S. warmongering abroad. No wonder Trump is thrilled. Under Carney, Canada is giving him almost everything he wants.