Leader of the Free World

 

The annual World Economic Forum (WEF) met in Davos, Switzerland, last month. The non-profit WEF was founded in 1971 by a University of Geneva professor to spread good management practices among European businesses and was so successful that it soon expanded with offices around the world and has observer status as a non-government organization in the U.N. The 2026 Forum invited 3,000 of the most influential government, business, and academic leaders from 110 countries to consider solutions to the world’s most pressing problems such as climate change, international cooperation and trade, geopolitical stability, unregulated capitalism, taxation and wealth gaps, public health, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (AI and other advanced technologies). 

The highlight of this year’s Forum was a speech by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who said that erratic changes in U.S. economic and foreign policies during the past year have “ruptured” the stable and largely predictable relations that have prevailed for nearly 80 years among most nations. He called the rupture in the world order “the end of a nice story and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any restraints.” 

With the U.S. now an unreliable ally and largely responsible for the rupture, he asked “middle powers” and smaller countries to unite when the great powers use “tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, [and] supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.” Carney said that “middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” and reminded his audience that “other countries, like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that embodies our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and the territorial integrity of states.”

Carney closed by saying, “The powerful have their power. But we have something too—the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together. That is Canada’s path. We choose it openly and confidently. And it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.” 

Then something very rare happened: a standing ovation. UK former PM Tony Blair’s communications director called the speech “real leadership” and one of the “most important of recent times.” The Treasurer of Australia described the speech as “stunning … thoughtful, and certainly widely shared and discussed in our government and undoubtedly around the globe.” California Governor Gavin Newsom, leader of the world’s fourth largest economy, said that “numerous leaders from the United States privately sent me the transcript of the speech … and praised Carney for his courage and conviction.”

Clearly, Mark Carney is a man we should get to know. A Harvard graduate with a doctorate in economics from Oxford, Carney rose to a senior position at Goldman Sachs and then served five years as Governor of the Bank of Canada where he oversaw the country’s response to the 2008 global financial crisis. His policies were so successful that he was appointed Governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020, the first non-Briton in the Bank’s 332-year history. After that, he was UN special envoy for climate action and finance.

In March 2025, Carney ran in his first election and became leader of Canada’s Liberal Party with 86 percent of the Party vote, making him prime minister. As PM, he has struck trade deals with Indonesia, the UAE, China, and others; has criticized global and U.S. wealth gaps between the rich and the rest; has increased the defense budget; and has favored green energy with incentives while keeping an additional tax on large industrial emitters. He announced Canada’s formal recognition of a Palestinian state. We need an able, trusted, visionary Leader of the Free World. Mark Carney is such a person.