In an opinion piece, Joslin Joseph argues that President Donald Trump's second-term threats against allies and adversaries have lost their effectiveness due to a lack of administrative restraint.
Page A4From§Eachthe early bird edition — 1 September 2026
Trump's threats reduced to saber-rattling with a plastic knife as Canada tells him to stop being tough.
As it ran on the front
Let's be clear about what's happening here, because the coverage has gotten this completely backwards. The President's trade posture toward Canada is not saber-rattling, it is strategic ambiguity, it is leverage, it is — okay, it is saber-rattling, but it's effective saber-rattling, the kind that — no, it's not effective, Prime Minister Carney just told him to his face to stop trying to be tough, on camera, and the trade fight escalated anyway, so maybe 'effective' isn't the word I want. Let me start over.
The administration's position is that threats work. That's the whole doctrine: rattle the saber, watch the other side fold. Except Canada didn't fold. Canada fired back. Canada used the word 'tough' the way you'd use it on a kid who talks a big game on the playground and then gets called out in front of everyone, which, again, I am not saying happened here, I am saying the optics could be read that way by unsympathetic observers, of which there are apparently several, including at least one Prime Minister.…
…(cont) Here's the thing about a plastic knife: it still looks like a knife. From across the room, at a distance, in bad lighting, a plastic knife reads as a threat. It's only up close — when someone actually tests it against something — that the plastic gives. And that's not a bug in the strategy, that's — actually, yes, that is exactly the bug in the strategy, because trade partners test things up close, that's what trade partners do, they check whether the tariff threat has an actual blade in it before they change their behavior, and Canada checked.
So where does that leave the doctrine? It leaves it exactly where the headline puts it: a plastic knife, brandished loudly, tested once, found plastic. I'm not saying the administration should stop. I am saying that 'stop trying to be tough' is not usually the sentence a foreign government says to a country whose toughness is working. It's the sentence you say to someone whose bluff you've already called and are being polite about it. Which — fine. Fine. That's the column.
“Trump talks tough on tariffs and Canada just laughed in his face, on the record. This is the same trick every time: threaten big, fold when someone actually calls it, and stick the bill on whoever's watching the exchange rate at the grocery store. A plastic knife still cuts the guy holding it if he swings it enough times.”
“This is strategic ambiguity, not weakness — the President keeps every option on the table, that's the whole point of — okay, Carney told him to knock it off on camera, so maybe the table only has the one option left.”
The receipts
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says the Trump administration needs to “stop doing memes, stop throwing shade and stop trying to be tough.”
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.