Shortly after Canada and America became embroiled in the worst bilateral trade war in their modern history, the secure phones of Europe’s top leaders lit up with a trans-Atlantic call. Mark Carney was pushing to take Canada’s relationship with the EU to the next level—a bold gambit to rewire the economic cabling of the Western alliance.
For months, the Canadian prime minister had held private conversations with almost every major European leader—from France to Italy, Germany and Scandinavia and even some of the continent’s lesser-known royals—on how to more deeply plug Canada and its 41 million people into Europe’s 27-nation club.
Now, Carney was accelerating Canada’s pivot to Europe, matchmaking a shotgun marriage to offset the pain of its divorce with America. In effect, a threat to make Canada the 51st state is pushing America’s northern neighbor so close to Europe that leaders have begun to half-in-jest dub it the EU’s newest member.
Carney has instructed his special envoy to Europe to scope out the most ambitious possibilities short of full membership in the EU or its common market, according to people familiar with the matter. The details are still being sketched by technical working groups for what the prime minister has told his aides will be the reorienting of an economy and a society that for half a century has been dominated by the U.S.
The full scope of the talks, often mired in technical details like European rules-of-origin codes, has barely registered in the White House. But it adds up to one of the world’s most significant—and risky—reactions to the second Trump presidency. Canada ships two-thirds of its exports across the world’s longest land border. The two countries have been twin pillars of the economic, geostrategic alliance called the West, and the White House is wagering their interdependencies will drag Canada back to the negotiating table, concessions in hand.
Carney—who studied in Europe, met his wife in the U.K. and ran the Bank of England for seven years—is placing a counter-bet that he can shift the country once known as British North America back toward the Old Continent.
“Wouldn’t it be lovely if Canada was the 28th state of the European Union rather than the 51st state of the United States?” asked Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who speaks regularly with Carney.
