in Featured World News Carney’s ex-company Brookfield has deep financial ties with the Trump family
by Quinn Patrick, True North
Canadian investment firm Brookfield, formerly chaired by Liberal leader Mark Carney has close business ties to the Trump family.
Canadian investment firm Brookfield, formerly chaired by Liberal leader Mark Carney has close business ties to the Trump family.
In 2018, Brookfield agreed to lease a New York City property from Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law. The lease was for a 99-year billion-dollar agreement, which saw the company forking over the full USD $1.1 billion upfront, instead of paying it off annually.
Kushner served as the White House senior advisor to Trump during the time of the Brookfield deal and also dealt with the administration’s relationship to the Middle East, visiting Qatar to discuss its blockade against the U.S., which was eventually lifted.
Brookfield’s second-largest stakeholder during this time was the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, which helped to finance the billion-dollar deal.
The deal was brokered in 2018, before Carney became chair of Brookfield and at a time when Kushner’s family was in debt to repay USD $1.2 billion in mortgage payments by February 2019.
Carney, who still holds $6.8 million in Brookfield financial interests, spoke with Trump for the first time since he took office over the phone Friday, which Carney called “cordial” and “substantive.”
Trump also displayed newfound respect and diplomacy towards Canada following the conversation, saying it was “extremely productive.”
It was a dramatic change in tone considering only one day prior Carney announced that Canada’s relationship with the U.S. was “over.”
“The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperations, is over,” Carney said Thursday. “What exactly the United States does next is unclear, but what is clear is that we as Canadians have agency, we have power. We are masters in our own home.”