Rachel Bade: “President Donald Trump is vowing to stop America’s northern neighbor, Canada, from finalizing a trade deal with Communist China, predicting to me in a brief phone call this morning that it won’t come to fruition.”

“The president took to Truth Social Saturday morning with a threat to slap Canada — a top U.S. trading partner — with a 100 percent tariff if they become a ‘drop off port’ for Chinese goods. I phoned him to follow up, asking if he views a Canada-China trade deal as a threat to the U.S.”

Said Trump: “It’s not going to be a threat — because we won’t let it happen.”

He later wrote on Truth Social: “If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff against all Canadian goods and products coming into the U.S.A..”

He referred to Prime Minister Mark Carney as “Governor Carney.”

Wall Street Journal: “President Trump has backed down—for now—from his threats to use economic or military coercion to take over the Danish territory of Greenland. But few people in this seafront city are celebrating their tactical victory.”

“The shock of the U.S.’s raw expansionist ambition still hangs in the air, like the gulls at Nuuk’s harbor scouring the fishing boats for scraps of seal meat.”

“What rankles most, say many Greenlanders, is that Trump treated their home—which he called ‘a piece of ice, cold and poorly located’ —as a commodity.”

New York Times: “While China has talked about expanding trade and access to shipping lanes and natural resources in the Arctic, it has developed only a small footprint there over the years. And even as China and Russia compete with the United States in many parts of the world, they do not present a threat to American interests in or near Greenland, say experts on those two superpowers and current and former U.S. officials, including intelligence analysts.”

“Those findings contrast sharply with assertions by President Trump, who has repeatedly cited security as the reason he wants to acquire Greenland.”

“Canada and the Trump administration are locked in a war of words over Prime Minister Mark Carney’s bid to chart a new model for smaller powers to fight back against the U.S.’s aggressive use of its economic and military might,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“In the past week, Carney has resolved a trade dispute with America’s biggest strategic competitor, China, and delivered a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland urging smaller powers to unite against economic coercion from the world’s great powers.”

“The moves drew cheers at home and abroad as a template on how to stand up to the Trump administration’s perceived bullying, just as the president was threatening Europe with retribution if Denmark didn’t yield the Arctic island of Greenland to the U.S.”

“But Carney’s actions also incensed the Trump administration.”

New York Times: “It was a formula familiar to anyone who has tracked the approach to power that Mr. Trump honed in the New York real estate world and brought with him to the White House, one that leans heavily on bullying and an ability to keep opponents off-balance.”

“But this week Mr. Trump also discovered the limits of his coercive powers. After he threatened a wave of new tariffs, markets fell abruptly, which always seizes his attention. Allies objected, this time openly. And by the time the president returned to Washington on Thursday night, it was clear that he had left considerable damage to the Western alliance in his wake.”

“When the climb-down came, it was with only the vaguest explanation from the president.”