\n<\/p>\n
Donald Trump threatened a 25% tariff on a slew of European countries including Denmark, Germany, France and the UK \u2013 until the US is allowed to purchase Greenland, in an extraordinary escalation of the president\u2019s bid to claim the autonomous Danish territory.<\/p>\n
In a lengthy post on Saturday on Truth Social, Trump said he would impose a 10% tariff on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland beginning 1 February, \u201con any and all goods sent to the United States of America\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said the tariff will increase to 25% on 1 June.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis Tariff will be due and payable until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
The president\u2019s longstanding interest in acquiring Greenland \u201cone way or the other\u201d has become a fixation since the US raid that captured Venezuelan president Nicol\u00e1s Maduro earlier in January. While he has claimed the Arctic territory\u2019s current status poses a national security threat to the US, this has been disputed by US allies, including Denmark.<\/p>\n
In the Saturday morning post, Trump said forces from the eight European nations \u201chave journeyed to Greenland, for purposes unknown\u201d. It was an apparent reference to Nato allies deploying troops in Greenland on Thursday in response to Trump\u2019s threats to forcefully take the Arctic island, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe President\u2019s statement comes as a surprise,\u201d Lars L\u00f8kke Rasmussen, Denmark\u2019s foreign minister, responded on social media. \u201cEarlier this week, we had a constructive meeting with Vice President Vance and Secretary Rubio. The purpose of the increased military presence in Greenland, to which the President refers, is to enhance security in the Arctic.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery insult, threat, tariff and lie that we receive strengthens our resolve,\u201d Rasmus Jarlov, the conservative chair of Denmark\u2019s defence committee, wrote in more direct language. \u201cThe answer from Denmark and Greenland is final: We will never hand over Greenland. We pray that our true allies will stand with us because we are going to need it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tariff threat against Nato allies united the leaders of those nations in unusually blunt language, after months of treading carefully for fear of triggering the volatile US president\u2019s rage.<\/p>\n
In response to Trump\u2019s comments on Saturday, the EU commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said in a statement that the Europeans \u201chave consistently underlined our shared transatlantic interest in peace and security in the Arctic, including through NATO. The pre-coordinated Danish exercise, conducted with allies, responds to the need to strengthen Arctic security and poses no threat to anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe EU stands in full solidarity with Denmark and the people of Greenland,\u201d she added. \u201cTariffs would undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur position on Greenland is very clear \u2013 it is part of the Kingdom of Denmark and its future is a matter for the Greenlanders and the Danes,\u201d the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, said. \u201cApplying 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, drew an implicit comparison between Trump\u2019s threats to seize Greenland and Vladimir Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine. \u201cNo intimidation or threat will influence us \u2013 neither in Ukraine, nor in Greenland, nor anywhere else in the world when we are confronted with such situations,\u201d Macron wrote in a social media riposte to Trump.<\/p>\n
Finland\u2019s president, Alexander Stubb, whose excellence at golf previously made him something of a Trump whisperer, echoed the warning about a potential \u201cdownward spiral\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will not let ourselves be blackmailed,\u201d the Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, added. That sentiment was echoed by Norway\u2019s prime minister, Jonas Gahr St\u00f8re, who wrote: \u201cThreats have no place among allies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Germany\u2019s leadership was more reserved, with the German chancellor Friedrich Merz leaving it to his spokesperson, Stefan Kornelius, to say only that the government \u201chas taken note of\u201d Trump\u2019s statements and plans to coordinate with allies to \u201cdecide on appropriate responses at the appropriate time\u201d.<\/p>\n
On Friday, however, a spokesperson on foreign policy for the chancellor\u2019s Christian Democrat party, J\u00fcrgen Hardt, suggested that Germany could threaten to boycott the World Cup Trump is hosting this summer \u201cas a last resort in order to get Trump to see sense on the Greenland issue\u201d. Polling done before Trump\u2019s latest threat for the popular German tabloid Bild revealed broad support for a World Cup boycott, with 47% of Germans in favor and just 35% against, should the US annex Greenland.<\/p>\n
Even before the new tariff threat, there were mass protests in Greenland and Denmark on Saturday against Trump\u2019s efforts to \u201cacquire\u201d the island.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Greenland prime minister joins protests over Trump threats \u2013 video<\/span><\/p>\n His latest tariff threat comes just eight months after Trump announced that he had struck a trade pact with the UK \u2013 and six months after he announced a pact with the European Union.<\/p>\n The UK would have protection against future US tariffs \u201cbecause I like them\u201d, Trump declared in the summer. He described the pact with the EU as a \u201cpowerful deal\u201d and an \u201cimportant\u201d partnership.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s sudden reversal on Saturday even managed to alienate one of his biggest fans, Nigel Farage, the leader of the rightwing, anti-immigrant party Reform UK. \u201cWe don\u2019t always agree with the US government and in this case we certainly don\u2019t. These tariffs will hurt us,\u201d Farage wrote.<\/p>\n There was also criticism from Trump\u2019s own Republican party. Thom Tillis, a US senator from North Carolina, called the president\u2019s threat \u201cbad for America\u201d but \u201cgreat for Putin, Xi and other adversaries who want to see Nato divided\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that a small handful of \u2018advisers\u2019 are actively pushing for coercive action to seize territory of an ally is beyond stupid,\u201d Tillis added.<\/p>\n The president has repeatedly turned to tariffs in a bid to force countries to bend to his will \u2013 with some success. Days after returning to office for his second term in early 2025, Colombia agreed to accept military aircraft carrying deported migrants after Trump threatened steep duties on the country\u2019s exports to the US.<\/p>\n Trump, who has previously extolled the benefits of tariffs as a negotiating tool, stressed on Saturday that the US was \u201cimmediately open to negotiation\u201d with Denmark and any of the countries it was threatening to hit with these new tariffs.<\/p>\n His aggressive global trade strategy has raised fears for the US economy, which analysts and policymakers have warned could face significant damage from sweeping tariffs on the world.<\/p>\n While the White House has played down such concerns, a vast wave of tariffs unveiled by Trump last spring \u2013 when he proclaimed the start of a new era for the US economy \u2013 was quickly reversed as global markets fell sharply.<\/p>\n But his administration\u2019s erratic rollout of other tariffs nevertheless significantly strained US trade ties with the world. Americans now face an overall average effective tariff rate of 16.8%, according to the Budget Lab at Yale, the highest level since 1935.<\/p>\n The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said recently that Greenland\u2019s defence is a \u201ccommon concern\u201d for the whole of Nato. The Guardian reported that European troops had deployed to Greenland, in part, to establish what a more sustained ground deployment on the territory could look like, and partly to reassure the US that European Nato members were serious about Arctic security.<\/p>\n Fewer than one in five of Americans approve of Trump\u2019s efforts to acquire Greenland, a poll published on Thursday by Reuters\/Ipsos found. Both Democrats and Republicans oppose the effort, and only 4% of Americans think the US should take Greenland using military force.<\/p>\n Much of Trump\u2019s wider trade strategy is currently in the hands of the US supreme court, which is mulling whether the imposition of many of his tariffs was legal. A decision could be announced as early as next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Donald Trump threatened a 25% tariff on a slew of European countries including Denmark, Germany, France and the UK \u2013 until the US is allowed to purchase Greenland, in an extraordinary escalation of the president\u2019s bid to claim the autonomous Danish territory. In a lengthy post on Saturday on Truth Social, Trump said he would<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[4659,3251,964,715,6919,4636,2971,899,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-42011","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-allies","9":"tag-denmark","10":"tag-donald","11":"tag-european","12":"tag-greenland","13":"tag-sells","14":"tag-tariff","15":"tag-threatens","16":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42011","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=42011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}