\n<\/p>\n
Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on countries that do not \u201cgo along\u201d with his plan to annex Greenland, increasing pressure on European allies who have opposed his effort to take over the Arctic territory.<\/p>\n
After a tense week in which Nato allies deployed troops to the largely autonomous territory, which is part of the Danish kingdom, the US president announced he might punish countries that do not support his plans to take over Greenland, using force if necessary.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Trump\u2019s special envoy to Greenland said a deal for Washington to take over the island \u201cshould and will be made\u201d as a US congressional delegation visited Copenhagen in a show of support for Denmark and Greenland.<\/p>\n
Jeff Landry said he planned to visit Greenland in March and that the US president \u201cis serious\u201d about acquiring theArctic island.<\/p>\n
The <\/strong>bipartisan group of 11 members of the House and Senate \u2013 including the Republican senators Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski and the Democrat senator Chris Coons \u2013 travelled to the capital of Denmark to meet the Danish and Greenlandic leaders, Mette Frederiksen and Jens-Frederik Nielsen, in a show of solidarity against Trump\u2019s threats of military intervention.<\/p>\n It is the second time this week Trump has used the threat of tariffs, saying he would impose a 25% tax on imports to the US from countries that do business with Iran amid a brutal crackdown by its regime that has left thousands dead and imprisoned tens of thousands.<\/p>\n Trump raised the tariffs idea on Friday during a wide-ranging 45-minute nearly uninterrupted address at a packed rural healthcare event in the White House East Room.<\/p>\n Trump told the audience of lawmakers, doctors and political power players he might put tariffs on countries that did not \u201cgo along with Greenland because we need Greenland for national security\u201d.<\/p>\n He pointed to threats he made against European allies over drug pricing, saying he warned France and Germany of 25% tariffs if they did not pay more for prescription drugs, and recalled telling French president Emmanuel Macron: \u201cYou have to get your drug prices up.\u201d<\/p>\n He mused that he could take the same approach to Denmark and \u201cmay do that for Greenland too\u201d.<\/p>\n His comments came after Landry told Fox News: \u201cI do believe that there\u2019s a deal that should and will be made once this plays out.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cThe president is serious. I think he\u2019s laid the markers down.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s told Denmark what he\u2019s looking for, and now it\u2019s a matter of having Secretary Rubio and Vice-President JD Vance make a deal.\u201d<\/p>\n Denmark announced it had agreed to provide support to help Greenland\u2019s emergency preparedness.<\/p>\n Torsten Schack Pedersen, Denmark\u2019s minister for public safety and emergency preparedness, said: \u201cIt is important that we stand together.\u201d<\/p>\n Peter Borg, Greenland\u2019s minister for fisheries, hunting, agriculture, self-sufficiency and environment, said his government \u201cappreciates the support from Denmark to strengthen preparedness in Greenland\u201d.<\/p>\n This week, Greenlanders living in the capital, Nuuk, said they were so afraid of the threat from the US that they were watching the skies and seas themselves. In the absence of emergency preparedness support from authorities, many said they had been left to work out their own plans on what to do in the case of emergency evacuation or capture by US forces.<\/p>\n <\/span>What do people in Greenland think of Trump\u2019s threats? \u2013 video<\/span><\/p>\n During the congressional visit to Denmark, for which the Greenlandic flag, Erfalasorput, was flown at Christiansborg Palace, the US lawmakers were due to meet other Danish and Greenlandic politicians as well as Frederiksen and Nielsen.<\/p>\n Arriving at a lunch meeting at the Confederation of Danish Industry, the Democrat Steny Hoyer told TV 2: \u201cKeep the faith. You\u2019ve got a lot of people with you.\u201d<\/p>\n At a joint press conference, Coons thanked Denmark for \u201c225 years of being a good and trusted ally and partner\u201d and said they had a \u201cstrong and robust\u201d dialogue about how to continue their relationship into the future.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of rhetoric but not a lot of reality\u201d in Washington, he said, in discussions about Greenland. He added that they were hoping to use information from the visit to try to \u201clower the temperature\u201d and have a \u201cconstructive dialogue\u201d at home.<\/p>\n Murkowski said the majority of Americans did not want a US takeover of Greenland, adding: \u201cGreenland needs to be viewed as our ally, not as an asset.\u201d<\/p>\n After Wednesday\u2019s closely watched high-stakes meeting between the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, the US vice-president, Vance, and the foreign ministers of Greenland and Denmark, the two sides gave starkly contrasting accounts of what was agreed.<\/p>\n The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on Thursday claimed that a delegation from Denmark and Greenland had agreed to \u201ccontinue to have technical talks on the acquisition of Greenland\u201d.<\/p>\n But Lars L\u00f8kke Rasmussen and Vivian Motzfeldt, the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland respectively, contradicted her claims.<\/p>\n Rasmussen said they had not made such an agreement, but had formed a working group to investigate whether it was possible to \u201caccommodate\u201d US security wishes for the Arctic region.<\/p>\n Motzfeldt said Leavitt had not been at the meeting, telling the Greenland newspaper Sermitsiaq: \u201cThere is a lot of work ahead, the situation is still very uncertain, but we have a new channel, a place where we can talk directly to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n On Thursday, Frederiksen said Greenland\u2019s defence was a \u201ccommon concern\u201d for Nato as international troops started arriving in Greenland from across Europe.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the German defence ministry said on Friday that the reconnaissance mission would assess the viability of deploying Eurofighter jets to the territory.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a matter of looking at whether the Arctic is secure and to what extent we can contribute to this together with our Nato partners,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on countries that do not \u201cgo along\u201d with his plan to annex Greenland, increasing pressure on European allies who have opposed his effort to take over the Arctic territory. After a tense week in which Nato allies deployed troops to the largely autonomous territory, which is part of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[6919,21202,72,899,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-41939","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-greenland","9":"tag-oppose","10":"tag-tariffs","11":"tag-threatens","12":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}