“The stakes are high,” Carney said on Sunday, speaking to Liberal Party members in Ottawa. He has wasted little time responding to Trump, whose threats to tariff Canadian goods and turn the country into the 51^st state have triggered a sense of crisis. “We have made this the greatest country in the world, and now our neighbor wants to take us,” he said. “No way. Impossible.”

The province of Ontario, meanwhile, imposed a 25% surcharge Monday on the electricity it supplies to the U.S., following through on Premier Doug Ford’s threat to retaliate against tariffs that Trump announced last week.

Carney built his blowout leadership win—he received support of roughly 86% of the ruling Liberal Party’s members—with assurances he would use his economic and business experience and relationships with global leaders to mitigate the impact of Trump’s agenda. Trump has taken a sledgehammer to the institutional infrastructure Carney spent his career trying to nurture.

Mark Carney speaking at the Liberal Party’s leadership announcement event in Ottawa on Sunday. Photo: David Kawai/Bloomberg News

While Trump is the brash billionaire heir to a New York real estate fortune, Carney, 59 years old, is the son of schoolteachers from the town of Fort Smith in Canada’s subarctic. He studied economics at Harvard and Oxford, and worked in London, Tokyo, New York and Toronto as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs. He then served as the governor of the Bank of Canada and then the Bank of England, where he helped stabilize the British economy after the Brexit referendum to leave the European Union.

Later, Carney was the United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Action and sat on the board of the World Economic Forum, the think tank behind the annual meeting of policymakers and business leaders at Davos, Switzerland. Most recently, he was the chair of the board for Brookfield Asset Management, one of the world’s biggest investment firms.

“My strength is I know how the world works, I know how to get things done, I’m connected, I can deliver for the country,” Carney said on a recent podcast. “My weakness is people will charge me with being elitist, or a globalist. Well, it happens to be exactly what we need.”

Not all Canadians agree. Commentator and author Jordan Peterson recently compared Carney to a “tyrant” who wants to use fear about climate change to curtail personal freedoms and to subjugate businesses through implementation of diversity, equity and inclusion policies and environmental and social governance initiatives. Before Trump’s return to the White House, there were signs that the Liberal Party under Canada’s outgoing leader Justin Trudeau was heading to defeat in parliamentary elections later this year after failing to address issues ranging from soaring living costs to rising immigration.

“Trump’s star is ascendant while Carney’s authoritarian globalist agenda is in decline,” said Peter Foster, an author and columnist for Canada’s Financial Post.

Mark Carney was the governor of the bank of England from 2013 to 2020. Photo: simon dawson/Reuters

Trump’s moves to threaten Canada and Mexico with tariffs have upended the political calculus in Canada. Carney’s supporters say his victory offers Canada a fresh chance to engage with Trump, who had a fraught relationship with Trudeau, whom Trump had taken to mocking as “governor.” The last phone call between Trudeau and Trump descended into yelling and profanities as the leaders argued about trade and border issues.

Carney can help “reset” talks with Trump’s team, said Canadian Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne.

“Relationships globally really, really matter and he has relationships with leaders around the world,” said Catherine McKenna, former Canadian minister of environment and climate change who has known Carney since he first joined the Canadian government in 2003. “We need an adult in the room.”

Rank-and-file supporters also expressed hope that a new leader would offer Canada a new beginning with Trump.

“Carney’s not coming in with the previous history that Justin Trudeau had with Trump, so there isn’t that animosity. At least he’s not starting that way,” said Mark Colley, a Liberal Party member who supported Carney in Sunday’s leadership election.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s unpopularity had hobbled Canada’s Liberal Party, but that might be changing as Mark Carney assumes the party’s leadership. Photo: Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press/AP

Carney didn’t pull rhetorical punches during his acceptance speech Sunday, as he tried to reassure Canadians. “I know these are dark days,” he said. “Dark days brought on by a country we can no longer trust.”

Carney has said he plans to continue Canada’s strategy of retaliating against Trump’s tariffs with targeted duties of its own. The U.S. last week imposed duties ranging between 10% and 25% on Canadian goods, but a day later offered a partial one-month reprieve on some imports.

Trump said last week that he will put additional tariffs on Canadian dairy and lumber products. The U.S. is expected this week to announce 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum and will roll out global “reciprocal tariffs” on April 2, when the Trump administration releases a global agenda for its tariff strategy.

Canada has in turn put duties on some $20 billion of U.S. imports and has another $87 billion worth of products it said it could target.

“My government will keep our tariffs on until the Americans show us respect,” Carney said on Sunday.

Officials who worked with Carney said the leader won’t back down in the face of Trump’s threats.

“You want someone who is going to represent your country and have confidence in their own skin, and not be intimidated by Donald Trump,” said George Osborne, the U.K.’s former finance minister who recruited Carney to become the Bank of England’s first foreign governor.

Liberal leader Mark Carney speaking to media while leaving a caucus meeting in Ottawa on Monday. Photo: Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press/AP

Before he takes on Trump, however, Carney will have to win a general election. Carney, now prime minister-designate, will replace Trudeau after a short transition period. He then is expected to call a general election that will pit him against the right-leaning Conservative Party of Canada, led by the populist Pierre Poilievre.

Recent polls suggest a close race, a marked turnaround from last year, when the Conservatives were riding a wave of public discontent with Trudeau.

The latest polling from Innovative Research Group indicated that Carney, a political novice, had higher favorability ratings than Poilievre and is the preferred choice of the 61% of voters who fear the economic repercussions from a second Trump term. The Conservatives still hold a lead over the Liberals in Innovative’s polling, although that has narrowed from 21 percentage points to seven.

“If you compare CVs, Carney looks like the better bet,” said Greg Lyle, president of Innovative Research, of the comparison between the former central banker and the lifelong politician. “But I don’t think that advantage is locked in.”

In a weekslong election campaign where voters can get a closer look at the candidate, “Carney’s reputation is a lot more likely to bounce around,” he said.

David Dodge, the former governor of the Bank of Canada who lured Carney away from Goldman Sachs to join the central bank in 2003, said Carney definitely knows his way around policy. But a general election campaign could present challenges.

“He understands the big-picture politics, but retail politics is a different game, so I think that is going to be a problem,” Dodge said.