Trade war is a selling point at Carney’s investment show

Por Zi-Ann Lum and Aiden Reiter — POLITICO – TOP Stories

TORONTO — Behind closed doors at Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Canada Investment Summit, some of the world’s biggest investors see an upside to the country’s trade war with the United States.

International investors, including allies of President Donald Trump, sequestered themselves in a luxury hotel in Toronto’s posh Yorkville area this week, lured by Carney’s new investment write-offs and a pitch built around the premise that competition is good for business.

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand confirmed that inside the summit’s invitation-only meetings, business leaders see trade tensions with the U.S. driving competition — and making Canada a more attractive place to invest.

“You’re exactly right,” Anand said in an interview on the summit sidelines when asked whether attendees consider the trade war an economic driver. “There is this view that the economic future of Canada, which is our objective, is also bound tightly with the economic prosperity of each of the investors around the table.”

“We will always be neighbors, and Canada will continue to be the U.S.’s most important partner in many key areas,” Carney said in his keynote Tuesday. “After all, even at times of disagreement over our long shared history, we have always maintained deep ties.”

While the Trump administration’s tariffs have hit Canada’s steel, aluminum, lumber and automotive industries the hardest, a prospectus circulated to attendees focused on more than 160 natural resources, artificial intelligence, defense and infrastructure projects.

Summit attendees represent more than 30 countries and collectively more than CA$100 trillion in assets, including Amundi, Barclays, China Investment Corp. and Qatar Investment Authority. Carney is looking to fulfill a promise to draw in more than CA$1 trillion in new total investments in Canada over the next five years.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, whose firm manages CA$500 billion in assets for Canadian clients, appears to like what Carney is selling.

“If the Canadian government follows through with the plans that have been presented today, with the structure that was being described today, I think we’re going to have asymmetry of having more money invested in Canada than the money we’re managing for Canadians outside the world,” Fink told the exclusive audience in Toronto.

Seated next to Fink, Blackstone’s Jon Gray echoed confidence in the pitch. “For us, we have $50 billion Canadian of investments here, so, sizable,” Gray said. “I think it’s going to accelerate based on everything we’ve heard.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on positive comments made by Fink and Gray about investment in Canada.

In addition to Gray and Fink, the summit boasted major finance figures from the U.S. and abroad. Marc Rowan, CEO of the U.S.-based private credit juggernaut Apollo Global Management, was in the room. Rowan, a Trump ally, was interviewed for Treasury secretary, a role that ultimately went to hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, and serves on the recently created Gaza Board of Peace.

The conference also included EU finance fixture Nicolai Tangen, the outspoken head of Norway’s gargantuan sovereign wealth fund, and OpenAI’s head of country affairs, former British exchequer George Osborne. In attendance were senior executives from major U.S. banks Bank of America, Citibank and JPMorgan Chase, as well as executives from blue-state pension funds Washington State Investment Board and CalSTRS.

Carney’s summit is a public relations victory, gathering former prime ministers of different stripes to endorse his pursuit of more foreign direct investment to make good on his promise to make Canada a “leading energy superpower.”

Developing Canadian energy is no longer just good business, said former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in his closing pitch to investors.

“It is critical to our prosperity and indeed to our survival as a country,” he said, cautioning that there will be “significant costs” to be borne as Canada pursues “diminished reliance” on America.

The high polish of the investment summit is unusual for Canada and struck attendees as necessary theater that allowed Ottawa to convene companies, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds with provincial leaders to fund and develop projects within their jurisdictions.

“Certainly, there’s a reticence now with U.S. partnerships because we have seen what that can do when you have a partner that no longer shares your values and is acting illegally in terms of some of their trade deals,” New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt told POLITICO.

It’s a message Carney is taking to Strasbourg, where he will be the first non-European Union head of government to join the bloc’s State of the Union address. Carney is scheduled to deliver a speech to the European Parliament on Thursday, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in attendance.

Carney, though, downplayed any bets for a “big reveal” when he’s in Europe this week.

“The real deepening and discussions will be launched with our summit in Montreal next towards the end of October, and then go for it from there,” the prime minister told reporters in Toronto.

The glow from a well-received summit won’t last long for Carney, who is now under pressure from some of the world’s most influential investors to follow through on what he’s promised.

The prime minister faces a busy fall session that could see new tensions simmer within his Liberal caucus after he used the summit to announce that Canada’s four largest airports are open for private investment — a divisive topic that could threaten Carney’s high popularity.

Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing said on the event stage that the summit has been “all good and nice,” but now the pressure is on Carney,

“It’s like a bank CEO promising the next targets,” he said. “If you don’t deliver after one year, you have a problem.”

Fonte: POLITICO – TOP Stories