US President Donald Trump says he will impose tariffs on Nato allies over Greenland. Photo / Demetrius Freeman, The Washington Post
The United States will impose tariffs on countries that have sent troops to Greenland in recent days, President Donald Trump said today, dramatically escalating his effort to acquire the Danish territory despite assertions from Greenland and Denmark that the Arctic island is not for sale.
“After Centuries, it is time for Denmark to give back - World Peace is at stake!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The move significantly elevates a confrontation that already threatens to be the largest transatlantic rift in generations.
Britain, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands have all said in recent days that they would send small numbers of troops to Greenland for joint exercises with the Danish military.
Danish and Greenlandic leaders have said that the US is welcome to deepen its economic and security involvement in the territory, but they are firmly opposed to US efforts to take it over.
That puts Washington in the position of threatening to grab an ally’s territory against its will, risking a fundamental break in the Nato defence alliance.
The move could embolden Russia and China to do the same to their neighbours, European diplomats contend.
Most of the countries sending troops to Greenland have been careful not to frame their decisions as an explicit warning to the US.
Danish officials have said that the deployments are an effort to demonstrate a desire to co-operate with the US to bolster Arctic security.
Trump, however, viewed those moves with suspicion. “Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Finland have journeyed to Greenland, for purposes unknown,” he wrote in his Truth Social post.
Calling it a “potentially perilous situation”, Trump said he would impose 10% tariffs on imports of all goods starting on February 1 from those countries to the US, increasing to 25% on June 1. He said it would only be removed after a deal is reached for “the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland”.
“This is a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Planet. These Countries, who are playing this very dangerous game, have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable,” Trump said, embracing what amounted to a military threat against some of Washington’s closest and oldest allies.
Trump’s reaction was especially notable against Denmark. By lumping it together with the other countries, he objected to Denmark moving its own troops within its own sovereign territory.
Since the 27-nation European Union is a single trading and customs bloc, the imposition of tariffs on some of them meant that all of them would face the new trade taxes, European officials said.
European and US officials had reached a trade deal last summer that was spurred by Trump’s earlier tariffs. Its fate is now in question.
EU ambassadors based in Brussels planned to gather for an emergency meeting tomorrow to discuss the tariffs, two senior European diplomats said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk about private planning.
European leaders today were quick to condemn Trump’s latest threat.
French President Emmanuel Macron called Trump’s tariff threats unacceptable.
“No intimidation nor threat will influence us, neither in Ukraine, nor in Greenland, nor anywhere else in the world when we are confronted with such situations,” Macron said in a post on X.
“Tariff threats are unacceptable and have no place in this context. Europeans will respond to them in a united and co-ordinated manner if they were to be confirmed. We know how to uphold European sovereignty.”
EU leaders said they planned to confer about how to respond to the tariff warning from the White House.
“Territorial integrity and sovereignty are fundamental principles of international law,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X. “Tariffs would undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral.”
The Supreme Court is poised to rule soon on whether Trump has the legal authority to impose tariffs unilaterally in the way he has been doing since regaining office a year ago.
Should they decide against him, today’s tariffs would be among those that would be thrown out, and he would have significantly narrower grounds on which to erect trade barriers against other countries unilaterally.
None of the European countries that have sent troops to Greenland has done so in the quantities necessary to mount an actual defence of the island territory.
But the move is reminiscent of what some of them did for the Baltic nations that border Russia in the aftermath of the Kremlin’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
Back then, some countries, including the US, put a small number of troops as a tripwire in the area to warn a military rival that an attack on one of them would turn into an attack on bigger and more powerful allies.
Now, some of those European countries can be seen to be effectively deploying their militaries to defend Greenland not from China or Russia, but from being taken by force by their biggest and most powerful ally.
Danish and Greenlandic leaders declared this week that they had no intention of ceding political control of Greenland to the US.
The Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers visited Washington for tense meetings with Vice-President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio - and departed saying that there was a “fundamental disagreement” but that they would keep talking.
Despite the friction during the face-to-face talks, Danish officials said today that Trump’s new blast came out of nowhere.
“The President’s statement comes as a surprise,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen wrote on X.
“The purpose of the increased military presence in Greenland, to which the President refers, is to enhance security in the Arctic.
“We agree with the US that we need to do more since the Arctic is no longer a low-tension area. That’s exactly why we and Nato partners are stepping up in full transparency with our American allies.”
European officials who have spoken to Trump and White House officials about Greenland are increasingly concerned that there is no possible compromise with the Trump Administration on the issue, since the President’s strong desire to assume sovereign control of the territory seems to extend beyond the justifications he is offering.
Although Trump contends that if the US does not take over Greenland, China or Russia will, Danish and other European officials say there is no indication that either Moscow or Beijing is planning to try a territorial conquest of Greenland.
And they say no barriers stand in the way of Washington’s increasing its troop presence there.
Trump’s tariff threat came as a bipartisan delegation of U.S. lawmakers was in Denmark’s capital, Copenhagen, to try to “lower the temperature”, in the words of Senator Chris Coons (Democrat-Delaware), telling Danes and Greenlanders that most Americans do not support Trump’s effort to take the territory.
Greenland, a frigid territory of just 57,000 people, has been part of the kingdom of Denmark for centuries, but has gained more autonomy in recent decades.
Thousands gathered today in Denmark for “Hands-off Greenland” protests, and demonstrations also took place in Greenland’s capital.
Some Greenlanders have advocated independence from Denmark, blasting Copenhagen for years of colonial rule.
But opinion polls show the vast majority of residents oppose being taken over by the US.
The territory’s social safety net and economy are heavily subsidised by Denmark, another reason some residents prefer the status quo.
Washington already has wide-ranging powers to deploy troops to Greenland under an agreement signed with Denmark after World War II.
Danish and Greenlandic leaders have said that US businesses are welcome to invest in the territory should Trump want more of Greenland’s critical minerals.
Recent polling suggests Americans broadly oppose the idea of the US taking control of Greenland.
A YouGov survey this month shows 28% of Americans support purchasing Greenland, while 45% of Americans are against it.
Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of the US taking control of Greenland through military force, with 73% of Americans opposing.
Several Republicans who have already criticised Trump’s long-stated desire to control Greenland immediately rebuked the President’s latest threat.
“Greenland is our ally and threatening an ally is foolish policy, especially when we’d be able to add bases there if we wanted. We sound too much like Putin and it is wrong,” Representative Don Bacon (Republican-Nebraska) said in a post on X. Bacon has said he would consider impeaching Trump if the President pursued invasion plans of Greenland.
Senator Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) also called Trump’s response “bad for America”.
“The fact that a small handful of ‘advisers’ are actively pushing for coercive action to seize territory of an ally is beyond stupid,” he wrote in a social media post.
Administration officials say that the President is simply advocating US interests in his forceful threats.
“The President is doing whatever it takes for our national security in our hemisphere, whether you want to call it the ‘Donroe’ doctrine or the Monroe Doctrine 2.0, from the Arctic to the border, to the Panama Canal, to our key interests in Central and South America,” the US ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, told Fox News.
“In this case, he’s trying to make a deal. And this is no secret, that he sees it critical to our national security.”
- Ellen Francis and Steve Hendrix contributed to this report.
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