{"id":223975,"date":"2026-09-12T23:39:47","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T23:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/youre-at-war-when-you-get-attacked-mark-carney-shows-combative-nature-in-face-off-with-trump-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T23:39:47","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T23:39:47","slug":"youre-at-war-when-you-get-attacked-mark-carney-shows-combative-nature-in-face-off-with-trump-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/youre-at-war-when-you-get-attacked-mark-carney-shows-combative-nature-in-face-off-with-trump-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018You\u2019re at war when you get attacked\u2019: Mark Carney shows combative nature in face-off with Trump – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Canadian PM is one of the few world leaders to stand up to the US president. Former colleagues say they are not surprised
Mark Carney stood before a walnut-veneered lectern, his face drawn tight, as he announced that talks with Canada\u2019s biggest trading partner had collapsed. \u201cLast spring, I warned that America is trying to break us<\/a> so that they can own us,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I promised: that will never, ever happen. We are keeping that promise.\u201d
For years, the former central bank governor had worked hard to calm markets. Now, he was asking Canadians to accept uncertainty and confrontation.
Near the end of the press conference last Saturday, a reporter made reference to the sombre, combative tone of the speech: \u201cWhy does it feel like today Mark Carney<\/a> is going to war?\u201d
The prime minister paused.
\u201cWe were attacked. You\u2019re at war when you get attacked,\u201d he said. \u201cWe got attacked.\u201d
The unlikely transformation of an economist and central banker with no prior electoral experience into a powerful global politician has bucked precedent and expectations. But Carney has settled into the role he warned was necessary for the country, that of a wartime leader standing up to an erratic and vindictive adversary who seems hellbent on subjugating Canada<\/a>.
After trade negotiations with the US broke down, the two sides traded recriminations and made good on threats to impose new tariffs on each other. In his latest act of petty antagonism, Trump signed an executive order<\/a> on Thursday directing the US federal government to rename Lake Ontario as \u201cLake America\u201d.
But Carney, in walking away from the proposed deal, did what few other leaders have done: dared Trump and the US to test his nation\u2019s resolve.
\u201cWe cannot accept what they have offered, and we will not give what they have asked,\u201d he said.
For those who have worked with the demanding \u2013 and, at times, temperamental \u2013 <\/strong>central banker, such a calculated refusal to accede to a bad deal comes as little surprise.
Carney was raised in Canada\u2019s western prairies, and his story \u2013 of an outsider gradually working his way into, and eventually reshaping, powerful institutions \u2013 offers clues to a man unwilling to accept the terms set by others.
\u201cHe was pretty doggedly determined,\u201d said one person who worked alongside Carney when he was serving as UN special envoy for climate action in 2021.
When trying to convince banks to sign up to climate pledges, Carney could turn on the charm. \u201cHe was pretty diplomatic, when dealing with people that he knows he\u2019s got to influence,\u201d his former colleague said.
But it has been no shock to see Carney standing up to Trump on the world stage. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t surprise me \u2026 and I think it\u2019s because of that determination and that unwillingness to back down.\u201d
Carney was not always so sure-footed. When he was handpicked as governor of the Bank of England in 2013 by the then UK chancellor, George Osborne, Carney\u2019s hard-driving approach was not a natural fit with the venerable institution in London\u2019s Square Mile. When he arrived, it still had pink-uniformed, top hatted guards at the entrance.
The traits acquired during his days at Goldman Sachs have continued into his tenure as prime minister. He remains an early riser, a dedicated runner and demands that ministers know their files front to back, according to those who work with him. Media have also reported that staff are expected to dress in formal business attire and documents are to be written using British spelling \u2013 to the frustration of Canadian linguists<\/a>.
While Carney\u2019s career in a string of powerful institutions reflects a sharp, analytical mind, his tenure at the Bank of England telegraphed that the wonkish economist was also willing to become political when necessary.
When Carney overhauled the Bank\u2019s communications strategy, introducing \u201cforward guidance\u201d to show its thinking about future interest rates<\/a>, it was not immediately embraced as a success.
The senior Labour MP Pat McFadden \u2013 now a cabinet minister \u2013 accused the Bank under Carney of baffling investors and the public with mixed messages about the future of interest rates.
In October 2015, with the referendum looming on whether Britain should leave the European Union, Carney used a speech at Oxford University to underline the benefits to the UK of the \u201ceconomic and financial openness\u201d that came with membership.
With the eurozone debt crisis<\/a> a recent memory, Carney also highlighted the increased risk of financial instability that membership of the EU implied; but Brexiters seized on his positive comments as an unwarranted intervention in a highly politicised topic.
The row deepened when Carney suggested Brexit might plunge the UK into recession. Bernard Jenkin, the Conservative director of the leave campaign wrote to the governor, urging him to butt out.
Carney\u2019s reply <\/a>displayed the same relish for a fight that has been evident in his handling of Trump. \u201cDear Mr Jenkin,\u201d his letter began, \u201cI am responding to your letter to dispel immediately the numerous and substantial misconceptions it contained.\u201d He went on to accuse the veteran MP of \u201ca fundamental misunderstanding of central bank independence as enshrined in statute\u201d.
In the event, there was no Brexit recession, something many economists attributed partly to the Bank\u2019s robust response, including rapid interest rate cuts and quantitative easing (the emergency bond-buying scheme used during the global financial crisis).
Charles Randell spent five years on the board of the Prudential Regulation Authority, which Carney chaired after becoming Bank of England governor. \u201cI\u2019m sure if you ring around enough people who worked with him at the Bank, you\u2019ll find people who will say that he had his shortcomings,\u201d Randall said. \u201cBut with time to reflect on my experience \u2026 he\u2019s one of the most impressive people I\u2019ve ever worked with.\u201d
Randell, who was then the chair of the Financial Conduct Authority, said that even behind the scenes, Carney was a \u201cvery serious person, very analytical, very driven\u201d and \u201cvery careful about how he communicates\u201d.
\u201cOn the morning after the Brexit vote in 2016 \u2026 he went in front of the cameras to reassure financial markets that the Bank was ready to deal with any of the consequences of that decision,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was a masterpiece in strategic messaging.\u201d
Joseph Steinberg, a professor of economics at the University of Toronto, said that while during the Brexit debate, Carney \u201cdid not shy away from trying to tell kind of the hard economic truths\u201d, he had not spoken much about the economics of the current US trade war.
\u201cIn public, he is leaning pretty heavily on the sovereignty angle. It is clear that he privately is probably thinking about the\u200b\u200b cold, hard economics of an incredibly tenuous situation.\u201d
Carney\u2019s decision to retaliate against the US has caused some economists, including Steinberg, to point out that Canada will take a far more painful blow than the US.
For the first time in his career Carney is fully beholden to a wary public, a reality that underscores the clashing of two personalities: the technocrat who understands the economics, and the politician who must contend with the political costs of compromise.
\u201cAt the moment, Canadians are likely to be extraordinarily intolerant of making any kind of concessions to the US whatsoever, even if they are in our economic best interest,\u201d he said.
In January, Carney warned people at Davos that \u201ccompliance will not buy safety\u201d in a world increasingly dominated by hegemonic powers. While it never mentioned Trump, his speech was seen as a thinly veiled critique of the US president\u2019s aim to abandon longstanding alliances and reshape the world to his advantage.
One of Carney\u2019s prescriptions \u2013 forging deep relations with like-minded \u201cmiddle powers\u201d and restructuring to lessen reliance on former allies \u2013 has already taken shape in Canada, at a speed and degree to which the pollster David Coletto described<\/a> as a \u201cwartime-footing government without a war\u201d.
\u201cIt\u2019s a government organised around an external threat that\u2019s willing to suspend its own party\u2019s orthodoxies, centralise power to move fast, and measure itself in outcomes rather than values,\u201d he wrote.
Carney abandoned many of the policies of his predecessor Justin Trudeau, including his carbon and electric vehicle mandates. He has also fast-tracked large projects, including an oil pipeline, and invested tens of billions more into defence.
\u201cThe public has hardly blinked,\u201d Coletto said in an interview. \u201cMark Carney\u2019s approval rating has just sustained itself through this entire period.\u201d
\u201cWhen [Carney] first became prime minister, I was sceptical that a central banker would be able to respond to public opinion because that is the opposite of their job,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I\u2019ve been surprised with his nuanced read of the country. He\u2019s been adept at being not just politically effective but in holding his support together through a trying time. This suggests there\u2019s little value in underestimating his political instincts.\u201d
Polling shows that Carney remains the leader Canadians trust most to steer the country through economic uncertainty. But the prime minister has also embraced a role that would once have seemed almost incongruous: asking a country vastly smaller and less powerful than its neighbour to stand its ground.
He said in his recent address: \u201cCanadians don\u2019t submit to the weather \u2013 we thrive in it. We don\u2019t wait to see which way the wind is blowing. Or surrender ourselves to the waves to be storm-tossed by events.
\u201cWe set our own course. We make our own weather. In Canada, we are masters in our own home, from coast to coast to coast.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Canadian PM is one of the few world leaders to stand up to the US president. Former colleagues say they are not surprisedMark Carney stood before a walnut-veneered lectern, his face drawn tight, as he announced that talks with Canada\u2019s biggest trading partner had collapsed. \u201cLast spring, I warned that America is trying to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":223976,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}