It feels like the resistance is starting to accelerate. Mark Carney made a heroic effort at resistance, and perhaps he is setting a positive trend. Sweet resistance. Just say no to the insatiable pig. President Trump makes demands. When the other side does not give him what he wants, he escalates with bombastic threats of crippling punishment. The other side surrenders. Except that Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, evidently has not read the script. His refusal to buckle in the face of Mr. Trump’s trade ultimatum even at the cost of retaliatory tariffs has flipped the narrative of the president’s second term. Instead of giving in, Mr. Carney is testing whether defiance is a viable strategy against Mr. Trump. The age of capitulation that defined Mr. Trump’s return to office may be starting to fade. World leaders and domestic institutions are, in some cases at least, showing less willingness to submit to Mr. Trump’s will. European leaders have refused to join his war with Iran. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel flatly rejected his Gaza plan. Gulf Arab states forced him to abandon plans to charge a shipping toll in the Strait of Hormuz. Universities and law firms are rebuffing his directives rather than signing on the bottom line. Bond markets are rebelling against his fiscal policies. Even the ABC network, whose $16 million payment to settle a Trump lawsuit was seen as an early example of yielding to the president, has discovered that it did not buy peace and is now suing his administration for threatening its broadcast licenses. But even among Republicans, there are some worrisome signs for the president. Although he has successfully punished several prominent Republican lawmakers he deemed disloyal by rallying his MAGA base to defeat them in party primaries this year, G.O.P. voters have rejected Mr. Trump’s endorsed candidates in 10 nominating contests, including six in August alone. Polls show his support among Republicans slipping. “I think that recent weeks have been somewhat of an inflection point,” said Norm Eisen, a former Obama White House lawyer and founder of a group called the Democracy Defenders Fund, who has been waging multiple court fights against Mr. Trump. “At home and abroad, pro-democracy forces and everybody else are standing up to him with much more widespread vigor.” To the extent that there has been a shift, Mr. Eisen said, it owes in part to overreaching by Mr. Trump. “Trump has been his own worst enemy,” he said. “Greenland was a turning point, in part because it was an attack on the sovereignty of Europe itself and Europeans began to understand at that point there was simply no end to Trump’s rapaciousness and to his demands,” said Jeremy Shapiro, a former State Department official now at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Leaders across the world are watching. Mr. Shapiro said they “mostly now believe that backing down in the face of Trumpian aggression or insults only encourages more demands.” He added: “I think Carney is setting the template for how they will respond to future Trumpian tariff threats. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/us/politics/trump-polls-tariffs-carney.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
