In a sign of continuing US-Canada tensions, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday denied he had retracted comments that irritated US President Donald Trump, and said almost nothing was normal in the United States.
Carney, citing US trade policy, last week delivered a speech in Davos, Switzerland, in which he urged nations to accept the end of the rules-based global order Washington once championed.
Carney, citing US tariffs on key Canadian imports, is pushing to diversify trade away from the United States, which accounts for around 70% of all Canadian exports under the US-Mexico-Canada free trade deal.
"The world has changed, Washington has changed. There is almost nothing normal now in the United States; that is the truth," Carney told the House of Commons elected chamber when asked about the future of trade talks with Washington.
Trump reacted unhappily to Carney's Davos speech, saying Canada only existed because of the United States, and later said he would impose a 100% tariff on imports from Canada if Ottawa concluded a trade deal with China.
'I meant what I said in Davos'
After Trump and Carney spoke on Monday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Canadian leader "was very aggressively walking back" some of the remarks.
"To be absolutely clear, and I said this to the president - I meant what I said in Davos," Carney told reporters.
Carney said he told Trump that Canada was responding to the tariffs by "building partnerships abroad ... [and] building at home, and we're prepared to respond positively by building that new relationship through the USMCA. He understood that."
Carney told the House that a formal review of the USMCA pact, scheduled for this year, would begin in a few weeks. He did not give more details.
Earlier this month, Trump said the United States did not need the USMCA, calling it irrelevant.