Why Middle Powers Are Right to Push Back Against Trump’s Economic Bullying
By : Ya Libnan, Op.Ed
President Donald Trump’s latest threats toward Canada reveal a pattern that has become impossible to ignore: policy by mood, diplomacy by intimidation, and economics by contradiction.
On Saturday, Trump warned that Canada would face a 100 percent tariff on all goods if it followed through on a trade deal with China. The message was blunt and punitive. Yet just days earlier, following Prime Minister Mark Carney’s trip to China, Trump struck a completely different tone. “It’s a good thing for him to sign a trade deal,” Trump said at the White House. “If you can get a deal with China, you should do that.”
This is not strategic ambiguity. It is strategic incoherence.
The contradiction matters because it comes amid rising U.S.–Canada tensions fueled not by trade realities, but by Trump’s broader posture toward allies. After Carney criticized Trump’s pursuit of Greenland, relations cooled further. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Canadian prime minister did not attack the United States directly, but he delivered a warning the world understood clearly: the rules-based global order is fraying, and “middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.”
Carney is right. And the fact that his words resonated speaks volumes.
Trump’s approach — threatening tariffs one day, offering praise the next — sends a destabilizing signal not only to Canada, but to every U.S. partner trying to plan long-term trade, investment, and supply chains. Allies are expected to show loyalty, yet are punished for diversification. They are told to act independently, then threatened for doing so.
This is why more leaders are beginning to push back openly. California Governor Gavin Newsom captured the moment bluntly in Davos, criticizing global leaders for “rolling over” and urging them to “have a backbone.” His remark was crude, but the sentiment was widely shared.
Trade wars waged against allies do not project strength. They project volatility. And volatility is the enemy of trust.
Middle powers are not rebelling against the United States. They are responding rationally to an America that has become unpredictable, transactional, and increasingly dismissive of partnership. Standing up to that behavior is not anti-American. It is pro-stability.
If Washington continues to weaponize tariffs as threats and treats cooperation as submission, more countries will do exactly what Carney suggested: act together — not out of defiance, but out of necessity..
