Rise of world's 'middle powers'Listen to this articleDonald Trump's Greenland tariff threat and U-turn last week may have been a watershed for the world's "middle powers". If Mr Trump's aim is to extricate the US from a multilateral rules-based trade system and replace it with a purely transactional one, few now believe they can dissuade him. He said that even if a rules-based global order is now over, Canada and other "middle powers" can act together to avoid being victimised by American hegemony. That seems like a looser construct than a new multilateral rules-based world order "ex-USA". "Its collective bargaining power would far exceed that of the United States, rendering Trump's divide-and-rule tactics ineffective," Ms Krueger wrote for Project Syndicate.

Source: Bangkok Post January 30, 2026 22:54 UTC