Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday denied Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s claim that, in a private call with President Donald Trump, he had backtracked on some of the remarks from his much-discussed speech in Davos, Switzerland, last week.
“To be absolutely clear, and I said this to the president, I meant what I said in Davos,” Carney told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday morning, pushing back on Bessent’s remarks from the night before.
Bessent, in a Fox News interview Monday night had said Carney was “very aggressively walking back some of the unfortunate remarks he made at Davos” during a call with Trump earlier in the day.
In his address to the World Economic Forum, Carney had declared that the established U.S.-led world order was in the “midst of a rupture.” And he pointedly warned that the “bargain” of an American hegemony “no longer works,” adding that “great powers” have exploited and weaponized economic tools like tariffs.
The speech — which came as Trump was aggressively pressuring Europe to sell Denmark-owned Greenland to the U.S. — received a rare standing ovation at Davos.
