Keir Starmer has said Donald Trump’s decision to impose 10% tariffs on the UK and seven other European countries over Greenland was “completely wrong”.
The US president said the levies would apply from 1 February to Nato members – including the UK, France and Germany – who have deployed troops to the territory in response to growing uncertainty over its future.
Trump said the tariffs would rise to 25% on 1 June if a deal to buy Greenland had not been reached.
In a Truth Social post, Trump said: “Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland have journeyed to Greenland, for purposes unknown … This is a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Planet.”
The prime minister said on Saturday evening: “Our position on Greenland is very clear – it is part of the Kingdom of Denmark and its future is a matter for the Greenlanders and the Danes.
“We have also made clear that Arctic security matters for the whole of Nato and allies should all do more together to address the threat from Russia across different parts of the Arctic.
“Applying tariffs on allies for pursuing the collective security of Nato allies is completely wrong. We will of course be pursuing this directly with the US administration.”
Opposition politicians also condemned Trump’s threats.
The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, said: “President Trump is completely wrong to announce tariffs on the UK over Greenland.
“These tariffs will be yet another burden for businesses across our country. The sovereignty of Greenland should only be decided by the people of Greenland.”
Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: “Starmer’s US policy lies in tatters. Trump is now punishing the UK and Nato allies just for doing the right thing.
“Time for the PM to stand firm against the bully in the White House, and work with European and Commonwealth allies to make him back down from this reckless plan.”
Protesters take part in a rally in Copenhagen, Denmark, under the slogans ‘hands off Greenland’ and ‘Greenland for Greenlanders’. Photograph: Emil Helms/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP/Getty Images
The Reform leader, Nigel Farage, said Trump’s Greenland tariffs would “hurt” the UK. He said: “We don’t always agree with the US government and in this case we certainly don’t.”
Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, said: “Trump’s tariffs and threats mean it’s make your mind up time. If we can’t rely on America and we don’t want to cosy up to China, the answer is to get serious about our strategic future with Europe.
“Nato needs this too – the reset must be real, and it must happen quickly for all our sakes.”
Lord Peter Ricketts, a former national security adviser and retired senior diplomat, told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme that “the right thing for the European countries is to react very calmly” and “go on making the case that America can have all its security interests served by working with Denmark and with Nato”.
“Remember that in the cold war, America had 10,000 troops in Greenland, so it’s entirely open to the Americans to increase their military presence without going unilateral and these kind of threatening approaches,” he said.
He added that European leaders could in private make clear that “this tariff business isn’t going to work – for one thing, the European Union has a single tariff, so he will find he can’t put tariffs on individual EU countries; it’s the EU as a whole”.
“Rather than threatening tariffs, we need to be working together to work out the very legitimate issues about Greenland security – not that China is about to take it over, but that all of us in Nato have Arctic security as a priority,” he said.
“The way to do this is to work together and in the past, I think Keir Starmer and others have been quite effective at working with President Trump privately, not taking him on in public, and I think we need to go back into that routine to get him to see that there are other ways of achieving what he wants without this sort of threatening, blustering language about tariffs.”
