Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks at an event at a grocery store in Ottawa on January 26, 2026. Photo: VCG

In another move that was viewed by analysts as reducing overreliance on the US and seeking diversification of foreign relations, Prime Minister of Canada Mark Carney on Tuesday (local time) denied US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's claim that he has walked back the comments he made in Davos, Switzerland, in his phone conversation with US President Donald Trump.

Asked directly if he walked his comments back, Carney said "no."

Carney made a highly publicized speech at Davos last week, in which he warned that the world is "in the midst of a rupture" in the international order and urged middle powers to remain both principled and pragmatic. 

Trump responded last week by claiming that Canada only existed because of the US, and later said he would impose a 100 percent tariff on imports from Canada if Ottawa concluded a trade deal with China.

Trump and Carney spoke by phone on Monday, and Bessent said that during the conversion, Canadian leader was very aggressively "walking back" some of the unfortunate remarks, reported CNBC.

"To be absolutely clear, and I said this to the president, I meant what I said in Davos," Carney told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday morning, pushing back on Bessent's remarks from the night before, per report.

In another occasion, Carney is blunter about how he views the current US. "The world has changed, Washington has changed. There is almost nothing normal now in the US - that is the truth," Carney told the House of Commons elected chamber when asked about the future of trade talks with Washington, according to BBC.

With regards to the conversion with Trump on Monday, Carney clarified that the context of the call was "what Canada is doing positively to build new partnerships around the world," including "our arrangement with China," Carney said.

Carney's remarks contradicting the claim from the US side have made headlines across a variety range of mainstream media outlets on Wednesday. 

Canadian media Global and Mail almost posted every rhetoric Carney made on the relations with the US in a report titled "Carney denies walking back Davos speech in phone call with Trump" on Wednesday. The Associated Press published an article on Wednesday titled "Carney calls Trump's tariff threats bluster ahead of US-Canada free trade talks." It quoted Carney as saying that "some of US President Donald Trump's threats should be viewed as prepositioning ahead of negotiations to renew the free trade pact between the two large trading partners."

Analysts said that Carney's latest remarks show that the Mark Carney, who was elected as the Prime Minister of Canada in April 2025 succeeding Justin Trudeau, does not bow to US pressure. Rather he is standing tough and won't retreat from its strategic approach toward the US, that is to push for reducing overreliance on the US, seeking for diversification and establishing more pragmatic ties with other countries.

The tensions and divisions between Washington and Ottawa have continued to rise in recent months. 

At the political and diplomatic levels, Trump has more than once suggested turning Canada into the "51st state" of the US." On the economic front, the US has threatened to impose new high tariffs on Canada and sought to restrict its normal trade with third countries, similarly touching on Canada's core interests. 

"Carney's dealing with the US has been quite different from Trudeau, and he's making such stance more openly, and is not refraining from directly criticizing the US' moves" amid broader geopolitical shift, Zhou Mi, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, told the Global Times on Wednesday. Zhou stressed that such approach has won the support from Canadians.