Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Davos speech went viral, but it has sparked a predictably angry reaction from the Trump White House that could torpedo trade talks already on thin ice.

Carney’s call to arms to smaller countries to band together against the economic coercion of “great powers” sparked criticism from Donald Trump and his inner circle — and it is renewing warnings on both sides of the border that it could undermine Ottawa as it faces a review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the continental trade deal worth C$1.3 trillion in two-way merchandise trade.

Goldy Hyder, the president of the lobby group for Canada’s top CEOs, spent several days in Washington this week where he said he got an earful from U.S. lawmakers and business leaders.

“Obviously, the response from the Americans suggests that some harm has been done. I don’t believe it to have been significant or fatal, but I do think we need to make sure we’re sending the signals that we care about this agreement,” Hyder, the president of the Business Council of Canada, told POLITICO on Friday.

The standing ovation and breathless praise Carney initially received in Davos gave way to some hand-wringing Friday at the World Economic Forum and beyond.

“I’m not exactly on the same page as Mark,” European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said in a panel, a departure from earlier in the week when she walked out of a dinner with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick during an anti-Europe speech.

“We should be talking about alternatives,” she said. “We should be identifying, much more so than we have probably in the past, the weaknesses, the sore points, the dependencies, the autonomy.”

Trump and Carney, as well as their top Cabinet members, are exchanging blows against the backdrop of the looming mandatory six-year review of the USMCA, a process that could lead to renewal, modifications or the potential demise of a pact Trump once called the biggest and most important deal in U.S. history.

Trump fired the first shot back at Carney’s speech during his own Davos address the following day, telling the world: “Canada lives because of the United States.” He repeated past gripes that Canada “gets a lot of freebies” from the U.S. and it “should be grateful.”

Carney counterpunched the next day at his Quebec City Cabinet retreat, making a last-minute edit to a speech on his domestic ambitions. “Canada doesn’t live because of the United States,” he said. “Canada thrives because we are Canadian.”

Hours later, Trump revoked Canada’s invitation to participate in his Gaza “Board of Peace” initiative. Trump didn’t offer a specific reason. Then on Friday, Trump trolled Canada in a Truth Social post that included a dig about “doing business with China.”

Louise Blais, a former Canadian deputy ambassador to the United Nations, said the post-Davos bickering between Trump and Carney evokes the hostility that erupted between Trump and former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2018 at the G7 Canada hosted, and could be damaging to the USMCA review.

“Canada thinks that we’re pushing back on the Americans blackmailing us and holding us to account, but to the White House mind, it looks as if we are ungrateful,” Blais told POLITICO from Mexico on Friday, where she was attending meetings on the USMCA. She now works as a senior adviser for a U.S. consultancy and Hyder’s council.

“The damage could be eight out of 10, but it’s really totally up to the Americans. They are going to decide whether or not they push back. We certainly have given them a lot of ammunition to do so,” she added.

Trump’s top political lieutenants also piled on with insults and sideswipes of their own.

In an interview with Bloomberg from Davos, Lutnick called Carney “arrogant” and said his decision to strike new agreements with China will work against Canada in this year’s review of USMCA.

“This is the silliest thing I’ve ever seen,” Lutnick said of the idea that China will then increase imports from Canada. “Give me a break — they have the second-best deal in the world. And all we got to do is listen to this guy whine and complain.”

Lutnick said Mexico has the best deal, followed by Canada because 85 percent of its exports flow tariff-free to the U.S. under USMCA.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accused Carney of “value signaling.”

“If he believes what’s best for Canada is to make speeches like that, which I don’t think is very helpful, then he should make speeches like that,” Bessent told POLITICO’s Dasha Burns.

Bessent added: “In the context of the United States, I’ll point out the Canadian economy is smaller than the economy of Texas.”

Bessent noted in the interview that Trump stood up to China’s manipulation of the rare earths market. “Prime Minister Carney should say ‘thank you,’ rather than giving this value-signaling speech,” Bessent said.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer also questioned the wisdom of Carney’s dealmaking with China in light of the upcoming USMCA review and has been speculating the U.S. could negotiate separate deals with Canada and Mexico.

As Carney returned from Europe for a Cabinet meeting in Quebec City, his leading lieutenants remained defiant.

“There are always going to be stressful times, and let’s not sugarcoat it. The prime minister never does. It’s a difficult world,” Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon told reporters Friday morning.

When asked about the U.S. criticism, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said Carney was simply saying “a lot of things that people thought. And he had the courage to say it loud.”

Greenland’s Energy and Industry Minister Naaja Nathanielsen told POLITICO that Carney’s speech was “brilliant.”

“Right now, we’re still figuring out what is the American intentions,” she said from Davos. “I thought [it] was the most clear-eyed speech I’ve heard in a long time.”

But Hyder and Blais say Carney’s next priority must be finding a path back to bargaining with Trump and his team, and to end the bickering in interest of preserving USMCA.

Talks were expected to resume this month after Trump abruptly halted them in October, apparently angry the Ontario government used Ronald Reagan’s voice in an anti-tariff commercial.

Hyder said he got a lengthy briefing from senior officials in the Office of the United States Trade Representative, met one Democrat and seven Republican lawmakers and consulted his U.S. counterparts at the Business Roundtable, which represents the leaders of the largest American companies.

During his 90 minutes at USTR, Hyder said he was told Mexico was making “great progress” in dealing with trade irritants.

“They have the lowest tariff rate in the world as a result of it, lower than ours,” said Hyder.

“We’re now not engaged, we’re not conversing, and we’re waiting for the Americans to call us. Why would they call us to lower the tariffs that they’re imposing on us? We need to lean in.”

Hyder said he believes Carney has convinced himself Trump has no intention of renewing USMCA, and that he needs to disabuse himself of that “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“It’s not too late to recognize the opportunity to still get this agreement across the finish line, and we need to be at the table to do that,” he said.

Carney signaled he was irritated when he brushed off what he called a “boring question” from a reporter about how talks with Trump were going as he departed the Cabinet retreat this week.

Blais said that Carney needs the USCMA if he wants to achieve his goal of increasing exports to other countries.

“The strength of our economy and our ability to diversify is very much anchored in our North American competitiveness … because we’re seen to have access to the U.S. market that has supply chains that are healthy,” she said.

“The more we say that there’s a rupture with that, the less attractive we become as a country to invest.

“That’s the worry.”

Jakob Weizman and Marianne Gros contributed to this report from Brussels. Mickey Djuric reported from Quebec City.