Carney back home after trips to Davos, China, Qatar, focused on non-U.S. trade

DAVOS — Prime Minister Mark Carney has arrived back in Ottawa after a nine-day trip around the world — a tour aimed at drumming up investment abroad that has attracted some cross-partisan criticism.

Carney departed on Wednesday from Switzerland, where he attended the World Economic Forum and delivered a widely praised speech warning that middle powers must band together as larger ones try to pressure them through economic coercion.

He wrapped up the trip by attending a lunch with other national leaders and meeting with investors.

He also met Wednesday with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and both “reaffirmed their mutual commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Denmark, including Greenland,” according to a readout from the Prime Minister’s Office. That readout did not mention U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to take over Greenland.

“The leaders recognized the test facing the NATO alliance and emphasized the first response to that test must be to ensure the security of the Arctic, including accelerating new investments in the alliance’s northwestern flank,” the readout says.

Speaking on a panel discussion about Europe’s ability to defend itself at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, Rutte said Canada’s renewed commitment to NATO since Carney took office is noteworthy.

“I could say since he became prime minister, (Canada) is really back in NATO, back in defending the transatlantic alliance, and I think that’s great news,” Rutte said.

Carney started his trip in Beijing, where he clinched a deal to get China to lower agricultural tariffs in exchange for opening some market access for Chinese electric vehicles.

International Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu told reporters in Davos that, soon after its election last year, the Carney government set to work on long-lasting trade disputes with China — work that is now paying off.

Sidhu said that when he first met with his Chinese counterpart in June, the Joint Economic and Trade Commission between the two countries had been sitting dormant for eight years. The two countries were unable to have any meaningful dialogue on trade challenges during that time, he said.

“The first thing we did was getting that going, and you saw the results of that last week in China,” Sidhu said.

“We unlocked opportunity for over $7 billion in agricultural goods. Our first shipment of beef is out there, first shipment of canola is out there. Of course, other opportunities in energy storage, clean tech, EVs as well.”

After Beijing, Carney went on to Qatar seeking investments in major projects and promising to improve “people-to-people” cultural ties by expanding direct flights between the two countries.

In his own speech to the WEF in Davos on Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump boasted about his administration’s actions and accused Carney of being insufficiently “grateful” for U.S. protection.

That followed Carney’s Tuesday speech, which warned the assembled officials that the old rules-based world order is dead.

“If you are not at the table, you are on the menu,” Carney said.

Carney did not cite Trump or the United States’ tariff policy explicitly during the speech, but it was widely seen as singling out Trump’s impacts on geopolitics and trade.

Trump arrived in Switzerland around the time Carney was preparing to return to Canada.

Carney’s trip has drawn criticism from both Conservatives and Liberals, who question his government’s deals with countries that have dubious human rights records and his outreach to members of the global power elite in Davos.

Former Liberal foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy pushed back on Carney’s claim in Beijing that Canada is being pragmatic with China by taking “the world as it is.”

Axworthy argued in a blog post that this amounts to “an abandonment of an eighty-year project of activist Canadian engagement on the world stage” on issues like human rights.

Conservative MP Shuv Majumdar chided Carney on the platform X over his outreach to China and Qatar, citing their dire human rights records and past support for Canada’s adversaries.

“They traffic in the worst elements of the world, because they turn these assets they’ve built up into the indispensable dependencies” that Carney is consenting to, Majumdar argued. He said Canada should instead boost ties with Taiwan and Arab countries that have normalized relations with Israel.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Jan. 21, 2026.

Kyle Duggan, The Canadian Press