Prime Minister Mark Carney Defends Canada-EU Ties Amid U.S. Tariff Threats

STRASBOURG — Canada’s warming relationship with the EU “is a positive” process and Ottawa will not be cowed into abandoning the relationship, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday.

Carney’s comment came after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to slap “serious tariffs” on the EU if Canada became an associate member, an idea floated by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in her State of the Union speech on Wednesday.

“This alliance is a positive process. That’s my response to the American president,” Carney told reporters at a press conference after delivering his own speech to the European Parliament on Thursday. He added that “a stronger, more resilient Canada would be a more effective partner for the United States.”

“Canadians are united that nobody is going to tell us what language to speak,” Carney continued, nodding to reports that the White House had sought to interfere with the French language spoken in Quebec. “No one is going to dictate our culture, or with whom we can strike agreements.”

Von der Leyen’s proposal to make Canada the EU’s first “associate member” left capitals scrambling and seemed to take even Ottawa by surprise.

Carney name-checked the term in his speech on Thursday, praising von der Leyen for “opening the door to Canada becoming the EU’s first associate member,” and adding that he welcomes the ambition.

Pressed by reporters on whether he preferred calling the new EU-Canada relationship an “Alliance for the Future” or “associate membership,” he shrugged off the distinction.

“President von der Leyen used both terms, alliance for the future and associate membership. The nomenclature is a question for Europe; what terms they use,” he said. “What matters is the substance. What are we actually building together.”