“The Trump factor is the reason for the trip. The Trump factor towers over everything else Carney must deal with,” said Nelson Wiseman, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto.
The 59-year-old former central banker will meet with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Monday and later travel to London to sit down with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer in an effort to diversify trade and perhaps coordinate a response to Trump's tariffs.
He will also meet with King Charles III, the head of state in Canada. The trip to England is a bit a homecoming, as Carney is a former governor of the Bank of England, the first noncitizen to be named to the role in the bank’s 300-plus-year history.
Carney then travels to the edge of Canada's Arctic to “reaffirm Canada’s Arctic security and sovereignty” before returning to Ottawa where he's expected to call an election within days.