Mark Carney Wants to Rewrite the World Order. Americans Should Read His Résumé First.

The Economist today published "How to survive a predatory world order". The man most associated with that argument is Canada's prime minister, Mark Carney. In Carney's version of events, the predatory power is the United States.

On January 20, 2026, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Carney gave the speech that made him a global statesman. He said, "We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition." He said great powers now use "tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion." He said, "Hegemons cannot continually monetise their relationships." He told the middle powers to work together "because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu."

My view is this. Carney is not a neutral observer of the world order. He spent his career inside the institutions that ran it, several of them in the City of London, and now he is asking Americans to accept that world's verdict on an American president. His record is public.

The record

Carney spent thirteen years at Goldman Sachs, working in its London, Tokyo, New York and Toronto offices. When he left in 2003, he was a Toronto-based managing director in Goldman's investment banking division.

He became Governor of the Bank of Canada on February 1, 2008, and served until June 1, 2013. In November 2011, while still governor, he also became chairman of the Financial Stability Board, the G20 body that coordinates global rules for banks.

On July 1, 2013, he became Governor of the Bank of England and served until March 15, 2020. The Bank sits on Threadneedle Street, in the City of London.

On December 1, 2019, while still governor, he was named United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance. The Bank of England said his job was "shifting the financial system" toward net zero.

In April 2021, as UN envoy, he launched the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, known as GFANZ, together with Britain's COP26 presidency.

In August 2020, Brookfield Asset Management hired him as Vice Chair and Head of ESG and Impact Fund Investing. Carney called the move to net zero "one of the greatest commercial opportunities of our time." He later became chair of Brookfield Asset Management. He resigned from the company on January 16, 2025, the day he announced his run for the Liberal Party leadership.

On March 14, 2025, he was sworn in as Canada's 24th prime minister.

I am not claiming anyone controls him. I am saying his career taught him to see the world the way the global finance establishment sees it, and he has never answered to an American voter.

What Americans did

Between December 2024 and January 2025, all six of the largest American banks left the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, one of the sector alliances under GFANZ: Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan. In October 2023, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had opened a review of banks in the alliance under a state law that bars Texas from contracting with companies that boycott oil and gas. After the banks left, he closed those reviews.

On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an order withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement and revoking the U.S. International Climate Finance Plan. The order says these agreements "steer American taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance." The same day, he signed the America First Trade Policy memorandum. It ordered reviews of the trade deficit, currency manipulation and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and it says trade policy must "above all" benefit "American workers, manufacturers, farmers, ranchers, entrepreneurs, and businesses."

Carney calls that a rupture. I call it Americans setting their own policy through the government they elected.

Who sets the rules

At Davos, Carney also said "American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security." Americans paid for that system. When an American president asks for fair terms in return, Carney calls it coercion.

So here is my question for any American reading The Economist this week. When the world order is defined by a former Goldman Sachs banker who ran the Bank of England, chaired the global bank regulator and launched a UN-backed alliance of financial firms, whose order is it? American voters did not choose it. I think Trump's America First policy is the right answer, because it puts the decisions back with the people who pay for the system and live under its rules.

I wrote about how the City of London governs itself in The Veil of the Square Mile. Carney's career is worth reading in that light.

Jack Schumacher is the author of The Veil of the Square Mile (The Veil Press).