Following a heated back-and-forth between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and President Donald Trump during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, support for the Canadian leader has swelled, while Trump’s already-underwater approval has further declined.
Without explicitly naming Trump, Carney denounced “American hegemony” and declared a “rupture” in the old world order during a headline-grabbing speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos that appeared to make pointed reference to the current U.S. Administration. The words sparked ire from Trump, who told an audience at Davos that “Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, next time you make your statements.”
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But Carney has rejected that assertion and said he stands by what he said in Switzerland—and his pushback against Trump appears to have resonated with the Canadian public.
A poll released by the Angus Reid Institute, a Canadian nonprofit research group, on Monday found that Carney’s approval among Canadians has jumped eight points to 60 percent, his highest rating yet since taking over as Prime Minister in March.
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Though the same poll shows that Carney’s Liberal Party with only a narrow lead in support over the opposing Conservative Party, the Prime Minister’s personal brand has been given a boost by his hardline foreign policy stance in the face of mounting U.S. threats, and could play into voters’ decisions moving forward.
The polling comes as Carney has reiterated the stance he laid out in his Davos speech after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed that the Canadian leader had “aggressively” retracted some of the comments while speaking with Trump.
“I was in the Oval [Office] with the president today,” Bessent said Monday on Fox News’ Hannity. “He spoke to Prime Minister Carney, who was very aggressively walking back some of the unfortunate remarks he made at Davos.”
On Tuesday morning, though, Carney denied this outright: “To be absolutely clear — and I said this to the president — I meant what I said in Davos. It was clear,” Carney told reporters on Parliament Hill. “Canada was the first country to understand the change in U.S. trade policy that he had initiated, and we’re responding to that.”
Still, Carney said he had a “very good conversation” in a Monday phone call with Trump, who has targeted both Canada and the prime minister with a number of moves in the wake of Carney’s speech. In addition to his remarks at Davos, Trump has criticized a Canadian trade agreement with China and threatened 100% tariffs on the U.S.’s Northern neighbor if the deal went ahead and disinvited Carney from his Gaza “Board of Peace.”
Carney reiterated on Tuesday that though his country is open to negotiating a relationship with the U.S., Canada needs to stay the course in shifting away from trade dependency with America.
While Carney’s domestic approval has surged amid the tensions between the two leaders, Trump’s has slipped further this week.
New polling out Monday from Reuters/Ipsos found that Trump’s overall approval fell to 38%, tied for the lowest rating he has received since entering his second term in the White House. The decline in overall support came alongside a particular negative shift in Americans’ view of Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown after two civilians were shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis in recent weeks.
The poll found that Americans’ approval of the job Trump is doing on immigration fell from 41% earlier this month to 39%, a new low during his second Administration, while 58% of Americans feel that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is going “too far.”
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