China’s state-run Global Times on Wednesday was delighted by the tiff between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, urging Carney to prove his mettle by doubling down on the anti-American comments that Bessent claimed he had retracted.
Carney gave a speech at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, last week in which he decried the end of the “rules-based international order.” He suggested President Donald Trump’s tariffs and foreign policy decisions destroyed that order, although he did not mention Trump by name.
On Monday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he was present in the Oval Office when Trump spoke with Carney by phone. He said he overheard Carney “very aggressively walking back some of the unfortunate remarks he made at Davos.”
Asked about Bessent’s remarks, Carney insisted “I meant what I said in Davos,” and had not walked back anything during his call with Trump. He also claimed Trump was not upset by Carney’s recent trade deals with China.
The Global Times praised Carney’s rejection of Bessent’s remarks as “another move that was viewed by analysts as reducing overreliance on the U.S. and seeking diversification of foreign relations.”
“Carney’s latest responses mark a series of signs that the Canadian prime minister, who was elected in April 2025 succeeding Justin Trudeau, does not bow to U.S. pressure. Rather he is standing tough and won’t retreat from its strategic approach toward the U.S., that is to push for reducing overreliance on the U.S., seeking for diversification and establishing more pragmatic ties with other countries,” the Chinese Communist paper gushed.
The Global Times hoped that other Western leaders would follow Carney’s example, to show that America’s “coercive playbook” is “visibly fracturing even the tightest alliance.”
Carney’s new senior partners in Beijing gave him an approving pat on the head for launching an even more explicitly anti-American diatribe on Tuesday, when he addressed the House of Commons shortly after his first repudiation of Bessent.
“The world has changed, Washington has changed. There is almost nothing normal now in the United States – that is the truth,” Carney thundered, just a few minutes after claiming his call with Trump was friendly and mutually supportive.
The Global Times tried to egg Carney into scrapping with European leaders who remain on good terms with Trump, such as NATO chief Mark Rutte, who has advised Europe to “continue to build ties with the U.S.”
“Who will the Western world need? Carney or Rutte?” exclaimed Guangdong University research fellow Liu Dan. That is a question that no one staring down the barrels of the Russian or Chinese war machines would have much trouble answering.
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