Trump’s escalating pressure on Canada should be a warning to Europe: middle powers need deeper economic and strategic cooperation if they are to resist coercion.

Rather than keeping their heads down as US President Donald Trump wages another trade war with Canada, European leaders must recognise that they could be next. Like Canada, the European Union is a middle power whose future prosperity and security will depend on solidarity with economic peers.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s widely acclaimed speech at Davos earlier this year remains the talk of diplomats worldwide. Carney argued that middle powers must act together to avoid becoming victims of predatory superpowers, and he has lived by his words, duly standing with his European allies as Trump threatened to invade Greenland, a Danish territory.

Carney’s government has also continued to provide military and financial aid to war-torn Ukraine. And in addition to being a member of NATO, a military alliance largely designed to protect Europe from Russian aggression, Canada has also joined SAFE (Security Action for Europe), the European Union’s new common defence-procurement instrument.

Yet now that Trump has launched another rapidly escalating trade war against Canada, traditionally the United States’ closest economic partner, European leaders have been conspicuously silent. They are making a big mistake. Solidarity must be a two-way street.

In addition to threatening European sovereignty, Trump has repeatedly asserted that Canada ought to become the 51st US state. Short of annexation, he wants to force........

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