Carney, top EU official push Canada associate membership and wider alliance against Trump threats

MONTREAL — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and the European Union’s top official pushed Thursday to make Canada the bloc’s first “associate member” and build a broader alliance open to other countries as they warned of threats to sovereignty from economic coercion during U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war. Speaking in Montreal on Thursday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Canada and the EU would form the core of the proposed “Alliance for the Future,” but other like-minded countries would be welcome to join. Echoing Carney’s warning at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, von der Leyen said economic relationships once considered sources of stability were increasingly being used as instruments of pressure. “When trade becomes a tool of economic pressure, it is families that pay the price, from the supermarket shelf to the cost of a new car,” she said. “We are seeing in real time our sovereignty being attacked.” Carney said the alliance would help Canada withstand economic shocks and prevent foreign governments and technolo