Is Mark Carney Beating Donald Trump?

By Matthew Parish

Tuesday 1 September 2026

There is something profoundly improbable about Mark Carney as a populist hero. He is a former central banker, a Goldman Sachs alumnus, an economist by training and a man whose natural habitat would appear to be a conference room in Basel rather than a political rally in Alberta. Yet one of the stranger consequences of Donald Trump’s second presidency has been to transform Carney into something approaching a national resistance leader — and, more remarkably still, to give him an opportunity to defeat Trump on the terrain Trump values most: politics, money and television.

The question requires some care. Canada cannot “beat” the United States in any conventional contest of national power. The American economy is vastly larger. The United States remains Canada’s indispensable trading partner. American military power is incomparable with Canada’s. Were the dispute simply a matter of determining which country can impose greater economic pain upon the other, Washington possesses overwhelmingly the larger arsenal.

Yet politics is seldom quite so simple. A small country does not have to overpower a larger one to prevail. It merely has to demonstrate that coercion has failed. And by that measure, as August 2026 draws to a close, Mark Carney may indeed be beating Donald Trump.

The origins of the contest lie in Trump’s increasingly aggressive attitude towards Canada. What began as familiar complaints about trade balances and Canadian protectionism developed into something altogether stranger — references to Canada becoming America’s “51st state”, describing its Prime Minister as a “Governor”, tariffs and threats of further tariffs and finally even the purported American renaming of Lake Ontario as “Lake America”. The latter gesture is legally meaningless outside the United States but politically revealing. It is an attempt to convert international relations into branding. That is quintessential Trump. Politics is theatre and theatre is power. Carney appears to have understood this better than might have been expected of him.

The political contest

The first measure of victory is domestic politics. On this score Carney is doing remarkably well. Trump’s underlying assumption appears to have been that economic pressure would divide Canada. Canadian businesses would panic. Provincial premiers would demand concessions. Voters would blame Ottawa for lost jobs. Eventually the Canadian government would arrive in Washington willing to make whatever concessions were necessary to restore normality.

Instead Trump has helped create precisely the political environment in which Carney is strongest. When Washington threatened another round of 50 per cent tariffs, polling by the Angus Reid Institute in July found that only seven per cent of Canadians favoured capitulating to American demands merely to avoid the tariffs. Sixty-two per cent favoured retaliatory tariffs of one sort or another. Distrust of Washington was extraordinary: only 13 per cent trusted the Trump administration to honour an agreement once reached.

Those numbers matter because Carney does not need Canadians to love him. He needs them to believe that he is defending them. After negotiations collapsed on 21 August, Carney suspended the talks rather than accept the latest American terms. Washington proceeded with 50 per cent tariffs on a substantial additional category of Canadian exports and Canada retaliated.

The immediate political result was striking. An Abacus Data poll conducted between 21 and 26 August found 60 per cent approval for Carney’s handling of the trade negotiations against just 18 per cent disapproval. By the end of August, Abacus had the Liberals at 45 per cent against 35 per cent for the Conservatives — a ten-point lead that had widened as confrontation with Trump returned to the centre of Canadian politics.

This illustrates Trump’s Canadian problem. Every time he insults Canada, he makes Carney more useful. Carney can present himself not primarily as a Liberal politician but as the custodian of Canadian sovereignty. Conservative voters who might dislike his taxation policies or environmental instincts may nevertheless object rather more strongly to an American President describing their country as though it were a rebellious province.

Trump has therefore inadvertently changed the political question facing Canadians. Instead of asking “Do you like Mark Carney?”, they are increasingly invited to ask “Who do you want representing Canada against Donald Trump?” Those are very different questions. Carney is far better placed to win the second.

The economic contest

The economic argument is more complicated — but here too recent events have been surprisingly favourable to Carney. For much of 2025 and early 2026, the Canadian economy was distinctly unimpressive. American tariffs and uncertainty damaged investment and disrupted supply chains. Growth was weak. The Bank of Canada estimated that growth averaged only a little above one per cent annualised during the first half of 2026 and unemployment remained elevated.

Then something interesting happened. Canada began recovering. Statistics Canada reported on 28 August that real GDP grew 0.8 per cent in the second quarter — equivalent to approximately 3.3 per cent annualised — with increases in exports, household consumption and business investment. Even more strikingly, real GDP per capita increased by one per cent during the quarter.

Employment increased by 75,000 in July and unemployment fell to 6.4 per cent — its lowest level for two years. Since April employment had increased by 181,000, with much of the improvement occurring in the private sector. Compare this with the United States. American real GDP grew at an annualised rate of 1.5 per cent in the second quarter of 2026 — less than half the equivalent Canadian figure.

One quarter proves very little. Canada has not suddenly overtaken the United States economically and it would be foolish to extrapolate indefinitely from three months of statistics. Moreover the latest 50 per cent tariffs may substantially damage precisely those Canadian industries exposed to the American market. Nevertheless there is an important psychological point here.

Trump’s tariff diplomacy depends upon visible economic intimidation. The implicit proposition is straightforward: Do what I say or your economy will suffer. That threat becomes less impressive if the target economy starts growing faster than America’s. Carney’s broader response has therefore been more sophisticated than simple retaliation. His government increasingly talks about diversification — infrastructure, alternative export markets, European and Asian relationships and reducing Canada’s structural dependence upon the United States. Carney has acknowledged something previous Canadian governments were reluctant to say aloud: the old relationship with America may not be coming back.

That may ultimately prove the most consequential effect of Trump’s Canadian policy. Canada spent generations constructing an economy based upon the entirely reasonable assumption that the United States would remain a predictable neighbour. Trump has made that assumption unsafe. Once Canadian businesses begin constructing supply chains, ports, energy infrastructure and commercial relationships on the assumption that American market access may periodically be weaponised, those changes may prove difficult to reverse.

Tariffs can therefore achieve the opposite of their intended purpose. Instead of making another country more dependent upon you, repeated economic coercion gives it an incentive to become less dependent upon you.

Carney understands this instinctively because he thinks like a banker. Concentration risk is dangerous. America has become Canada’s concentration risk.

Then there is the media war

This may be the most amusing dimension of the contest because media dominance is something Trump understands to be a form of political power. Trump’s extraordinary political career has been founded partly upon his ability to seize attention. He provokes. His opponents become furious. Cable television discusses the provocation for three days. Trump therefore determines the subject of political conversation.

Carney has discovered an unusual defence. He refuses to become interesting in the way Trump wants him to be. Carney does not generally respond with competing insults. He speaks in the measured cadences of someone explaining a monetary policy decision. When Trump’s administration announced that trade negotiations had effectively produced a deal in mid-August, Carney responded cautiously that substantial progress had been made but important work remained. When the terms subsequently became unacceptable, he walked away.

The contrast is visually powerful. Trump shouts. Carney calculates. Trump announces victory. Carney reads the documents. Trump calls him a Governor. Carney talks about Canadian sovereignty. Trump renames Lake Ontario. Carney responds by explaining that the word Ontario derives from an Indigenous name meaning, approximately, a beautiful or great lake and observes that reality remains reality — “then, now and always”.

It is difficult to win an argument with someone who refuses to participate in the argument you have designed for him. This may explain the increasingly personal quality of some of Trump’s rhetoric. The American President has continued calling Carney “Governor” and demanding that Canadian leaders “fall in line”. The insults themselves reveal something important. A genuinely defeated adversary normally requires little public attention. Political leaders obsess about opponents who frustrate them. Carney has thereby accomplished an extraordinary transformation of his public personality. The former Governor of the Bank of England — perhaps the least obviously swashbuckling job description imaginable — increasingly appears internationally as the spokesman for middle powers unwilling to accept that relations between states should become exercises in submission to the strongest.

His Davos argument about a “rupture” in the international order provided the intellectual foundation. Middle powers, he suggested, must cooperate because otherwise they risk becoming objects rather than participants in the emerging international system. The confrontation with Washington has now supplied the practical demonstration.

There is something particularly effective about the mismatch between the two men.

Trump’s political aesthetic is maximalist. Everything is the biggest, greatest, worst or most disastrous. Every negotiation is historic. Every opponent is incompetent. Every agreement is unprecedented. Carney’s aesthetic is actuarial. One can almost imagine him responding to an invasion by producing a spreadsheet.

Yet this dryness has unexpectedly become an advantage because Trump’s methods rely upon emotional escalation. Carney offers remarkably little emotional surface against which Trump can strike. The result is that Trump can sometimes appear to be arguing with a man who is not arguing back. That is terrible television for Trump.

But has Carney really won?

Not yet. There is an obvious danger in declaring victory during the early stages of an economic confrontation between a country of approximately 40 million people and one of approximately 350 million. Canada remains enormously dependent upon American commerce. Certain Canadian industries — automobiles, steel, aluminium, energy, agriculture and manufacturing supply chains among them — cannot painlessly redirect their trade elsewhere. The newest tariffs may destroy businesses and jobs before alternative markets can be found.

Nor should the latest Canadian growth figures be romanticised. The Bank of Canada still describes economic growth as having been weak, inflation has recently exceeded three per cent and trade uncertainty remains one of the principal risks to the outlook. Trump therefore retains enormous economic leverage.

He also retains extraordinary political resilience. Opinion polls that would terrify conventional politicians have never had quite the same effect upon him. Nevertheless there are signs of weakness. A Reuters/Ipsos survey in mid-August put his approval rating at 33 per cent — the lowest level of his second presidency — although other polling methodologies have produced somewhat higher figures. Carney must therefore avoid the greatest temptation confronting politicians who find themselves unexpectedly winning: believing their own propaganda.

Canada cannot afford a permanent economic war with the United States merely because standing up to Trump polls well. The ultimate purpose of resistance must remain the creation of a tolerable commercial settlement — or the construction of sufficient alternative markets that Canada can survive without one. But neither should Canada accept an agreement merely so that Trump can announce another victory. That distinction is the essence of Carney’s strategy.

The paradox of power

Trump’s difficulty is ultimately a paradox common to powerful countries. The United States can hurt Canada enormously. But it cannot easily make Canadians want to be Americans.

Indeed the harder Trump presses, the more Canadian they may become. Threatening annexation, describing the Prime Minister as a provincial governor, imposing punitive tariffs and renaming geographical features do not necessarily create submission. They create identity. Canadians who previously regarded nationalism as faintly embarrassing may suddenly find themselves purchasing Canadian products, displaying Canadian flags and contemplating precisely what distinguishes their political culture from that of their neighbour.

Carney benefits from every one of these reactions.

And here we arrive at the deepest irony. Donald Trump believes profoundly in strength. His political philosophy, insofar as one can identify one, views international affairs as a hierarchy of winners and losers. Great powers impose terms. Smaller countries accommodate themselves to reality. Mark Carney is offering a different definition of strength. Strength may consist of declining to panic. It may consist of accepting short-term economic costs in order to preserve long-term political independence. It may consist of building alternative relationships rather than demanding affection from an unreliable partner. And sometimes strength consists simply of refusing to become angry when somebody desperately wants to make you angry.

For the moment, therefore, Carney is winning the political contest. The polling suggests it. Canadian national cohesion suggests it. Trump’s increasingly theatrical attacks upon Canada reinforce it. Carney may even be winning the economic argument — cautiously, provisionally and subject to enormous risks. Canada grew at an annualised 3.3 per cent in the second quarter while the United States grew at 1.5 per cent. Canadian employment has recently strengthened. Those figures do not settle the matter but they make a mockery of the proposition that resistance necessarily entails immediate Canadian economic collapse.

And Carney is arguably winning the media contest because he has stumbled upon Trump’s most irritating possible opponent: someone who will not perform the role assigned to him. Trump wants submission or outrage. Carney gives him statistics. Trump wants spectacle.

Carney gives him complete sentences. Trump wants Canada to acknowledge American dominance. Carney calmly explains that Canada intends to remain Canada.

That does not mean Mark Carney will ultimately defeat Donald Trump. The tariff war has entered a dangerous new phase and economic arithmetic may yet reassert the enormous disparity in power between the two countries. But Trump has already committed a strategic error. He has made Mark Carney interesting. And, rather unexpectedly, he may also have made Canada dangerous — not militarily or economically, but as an example.

If a middle power can withstand American pressure, diversify its economy, retain domestic political cohesion and emerge with its dignity intact, other countries will notice. That is precisely why this obscure quarrel over tariffs, dairy products, automobiles and even the name of a lake matters beyond North America. Trump wants the world to watch America winning. At the end of August 2026, an uncomfortable number of people are instead watching Mark Carney refuse to lose.