Loose Threads

What Mark Carney and the Edelman Trust Barometer Tell Us About Plurilateralism’s Problem

Some months ago, I wrote about Singapore's Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and his argument that plurilateral coalitions offer the practical path forward for small and middle powers unwilling and unable to choose between America and China. I want to return to that thread, and I am going to complicate it. Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney is now arriving at remarkably similar conclusions to Wong, but under duress rather than by design. At the same time the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer has just been released and suggests that the social cohesion required to implement what both leaders are proposing may be eroding precisely when they are needed most. This piece examines the convergence between Wong and Carney on small and middle-power agency, and introduces the Edelman data as complication: the trust deficit will likely constrain even the most sophisticated economic reorientation. By the end, I hope to have shown that while the logic of plurilateralism remains sound, it also requires social cohesions that we can no longer take for granted: and that the harder question for Aotearoa is not what path to pursue, but whether the conditions for pursuing that path exist.

Several months ago Lawrence Wong spoke from Singapore’s established position: a city-state that has never had the luxury of dependence on a single partner, where plurilateralism is doctrine rather than discovery. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney appears to be arriving at remarkably similar conclusions, but under duress. What Singapore has long understood by design, Canada is learning through crisis. The convergence is striking, and it raises a question worth sitting with: if two leaders from such different circumstances and contexts are reaching the same strategic conclusions, perhaps they are seeing something real about the structure of the emerging world order.

But there is a complication. The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer suggests that the social cohesion required to implement what Wong and Carney are proposing may be eroding precisely when we need them most (Edelman, 2026). Plurilateralism requires bridging trust; between states, between populations, and across cultural differences. The Edelman findings suggest that precisely this capability is in global decline.

Aotearoa was not among the twenty-eight countries surveyed in this year’s report, but the patterns Edelman identifies warrant attention nonetheless. We are not immune to global currents, and we would be foolish to assume otherwise.

Vulnerability as Revelation

The most striking thing about Carney’s strategic pivot is its frankness. In October 2025, addressing Canadians directly, he put the matter plainly: “The decades-long process of ever closer economic relationship with the U.S. is over: our strengths of being tied to America are now our vulnerabilities” (Carney, 2025a). This is not diplomatic hedging. It is an admission that the assumptions underpinning Canadian trade policy for a generation have failed.

The parallel with Wong’s “risen power” argument is instructive. Wong argued that Western policy towards China rested on a convergence thesis that events had falsified: the assumption that trade and integration would produce political liberalisation and alignment with Western norms. Carney is making an analogous claim about the American relationship. The assumption that deep integration with the United States provided security has been falsified by experience. Tariffs at levels not seen since the Great Depression, violations of existing trade agreements, and threats to Canadian sovereignty have revealed that dependence is not partnership (Carney, 2025b).

Carney’s response is diversification at scale. Canada will double its non-US exports over the next decade. It is re-engaging with China despite the tensions of recent years, positioning itself as a bridge between the European Union and Pacific Rim economies, and pursuing agreements with countries long peripheral to Canadian trade policy: Qatar, Ecuador, Indonesia, the UAE (Modern Diplomacy, 2026). The ambition is to ensure that no single partner can exercise the leverage that the United States currently holds.

There is something clarifying about watching a country of Canada’s size and sophistication confront what smaller states have always known. Dependence on a single market is vulnerability. The question is whether the recognition comes in time to act, or only after the damage is done.

Middle Powers at the Table

At Davos in January 2026, Carney offered a phrase that could have come directly from Wong’s interview: “Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu” (Carney, 2026). The formulation is arresting, and it captures something important about the strategic logic both leaders are articulating.

Wong and Carney are not merely advocating for trade diversification in the narrow sense. They are arguing for a particular kind of agency in a fragmenting order. The traditional multilateral institutions are gridlocked or eroding. Grand agreements requiring consensus among rivals are unlikely. But this does not mean smaller states must wait passively for great powers to sort themselves out.

The alternative is plurilateralism: practical partnerships among countries willing to move ahead on trade facilitation, regulatory harmonisation, and digital standards without waiting for universal buy-in. Wong pointed to Singapore’s network of trade partnerships as exemplary. Carney is now pursuing something similar, accelerating negotiations with multiple partners simultaneously and explicitly framing Canada as a coalition-builder rather than a rule-taker (Modern Diplomacy, 2026).

The convergence between them is worth noting. Both reject the binary framing that dominates public debate. Both emphasise that economic reality creates space for relationships with multiple powers, including rivals. Both position their countries as potential architects of the emerging order rather than passive recipients of it. And both understand that the window for action may be limited.

Whether this represents genuine strategic alignment or merely parallel responses to the same structural pressures is an interesting question. But perhaps the distinction matters less than the practical implication: small and middle powers are beginning to articulate a shared understanding of their situation, and that understanding points towards collective action rather than isolated adaptation.

The Trust Deficit

Here is where the Edelman data enters as complication.

Wong and Carney can articulate sophisticated plurilateral visions. They can sign agreements, announce partnerships, and reorient trade policy. But implementation requires something more than elite consensus. It requires publics willing to accept the dislocations that come with redirecting economic flows. It requires businesses willing to take risks on unfamiliar partners. It requires consumers willing to buy from new sources. It requires, in short, a capacity for bridging trust that the Edelman findings suggest is in global decline.

The 2026 Trust Barometer identifies what it calls an “insular trust mindset” now prevalent across the countries surveyed. Seventy percent of respondents are hesitant or unwilling to trust those with different values, backgrounds, or political beliefs. Trust in local connections (in our context, neighbours, whānau, family, friends and whanui) has increased by eleven points. Trust in national government leaders has declined by sixteen points. Trust in news organisations has declined by eleven points (Edelman, 2026). The pattern is one of retreat: from institutions to individuals, from the unfamiliar to the known, from “We” to “Me.”

This is the undertow working against what Wong and Carney are proposing.

Trade diversification is not merely a matter of signing agreements. It requires social infrastructure. When Carney announces that Canada will re-engage with China, he is asking Canadians to accept economic relationships with a country that detained two of their citizens for over a thousand days (Kovrig, quoted in Independent Institute, 2025). When he pursues agreements with Indonesia or the United Arab Emirates, he is asking Canadian firms to navigate business environments quite different from the North American market they know. These are not trivial asks, and they become harder when the prevailing mood is one of retreat into circles of safety.

The Edelman data points to a deeper problem. The report finds that employee concern regarding international trade and tariff conflicts has reached an all-time high of sixty-six percent. Sixty-five percent of respondents fear that foreign actors are spreading disinformation to sow domestic division (Edelman, 2026). These are not conditions conducive to the kind of outward-looking, risk-accepting orientation that plurilateralism requires.

There is also the question of who carries the costs of transition. The report documents a fifteen-point gap in trust between high-income and low-income populations, a divide that has more than doubled since 2012. Only thirty-two percent of people globally believe the next generation will be better off (Edelman, 2026). Elite strategic reorientation is one thing; persuading populations who feel economically precarious to accept further disruption is another.

This is the tension Wong’s framework did not fully address, perhaps because Singapore’s circumstances are unusual. A city-state with a highly educated population, effective institutions, strong public service culture and talent, and a long history of navigating between great powers has social capital that larger, more divided societies may lack. Canada is discovering that articulating a strategy is easier than building the domestic consensus to implement it. Carney’s approval ratings, the political resistance to his China overtures, and the criticism that he has made human rights “transactional” all suggest the limits of elite-led reorientation (Independent Institute, 2025).

Reflections

What does this mean for Aotearoa?

We are smaller than Canada, more distant from our major markets, and arguably more exposed. Our trade concentration in China exceeds Canada’s dependence on the United States in proportional terms. If Carney is right that dependence on a single market creates fragility, we have reason to pay attention. If Wong is right that plurilateral coalitions offer the path forward for small and middle powers, we have reason to consider what coalitions we might build and with whom.

But the Edelman findings suggest a prior question. Do we have the social cohesion and infrastructure to pursue the strategy that Wong and Carney are articulating? Is there sufficient bridging trust within our own society to sustain the disruptions that diversification would entail? Or are we, too, retreating into circles of safety, losing the capacity for the kind of collective action that navigating an interregnum requires?

I do not have confident answers to these questions. The Edelman survey did not include Aotearoa, so we lack direct evidence of where we sit on the trust spectrum. But the global patterns are not encouraging, and we would be unwise to assume we are exceptional.

What seems clear is that the strategic economic challenge and the social cohesion challenge cannot be separated. Wong and Carney are right about the structure of the emerging order: the space for plurilateral action exists, the binary framing is false, and small and middle powers have agency if they choose to exercise it. But exercising that agency requires populations willing to look outward when the global mood is turning inward, to accept disruption when economic anxiety is high, to trust unfamiliar partners when trust itself is in decline, and to penalise politicians who deliver culture wars, rather than economic and social well-being.

This is the harder problem, and it is one that no trade agreement can solve.

References

Carney, M. (22 October 2025a). Address on Canada’s plan to build a stronger economy [Speech]. University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada. https://www.euronews.com/2025/10/23/carney-says-canada-will-double-non-us-exports-over-trump-trade-tariffs-and-policy

Carney, M. (3 April 2025b). Statement on retaliatory tariffs [Press conference]. Ottawa, Canada.

Carney, M. (21 January 2026). Address to the World Economic Forum [Speech]. Davos, Switzerland.

Edelman. (2026). 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer: Trust amid insularity. https://www.edelman.com/trust-barometer

Independent Institute. (9 December 2025). Why Mark Carney’s trade strategy must change now. https://www.independent.org/article/2025/12/09/mark-carneys-trade-strategy/

Modern Diplomacy. (20 January 2026). Carney seeks new trade order as Canada tries to loosen U.S. grip. https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2026/01/20/carney-seeks-new-trade-order-as-canada-tries-to-loosen-u-s-grip/

Wong, L. (2024). Interview with the Financial Times [Video interview]. Financial Times.