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Trump announces plan to hit UK, Denmark and other European countries with extra tariffs over Greenland
Several EU countries sent tripwire forces into Greenland a few days ago. Now Trump has announced 10% tariffs on imported goods from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland. As a sidenote, despite predictions of economic catastrophe, Trump's tariffs have been smaller and done less economic damage than estimated.
Still, no one knows what's the next step of Trump's master plan. Will it fizzle like the whole "Canada 51st state" thing? Polymarket estimates 27% chance that Trump will take "part of Greenland" in 2026.
While this might be a ruse (you never know with Trump), I think it is excellent news for fans of the international rule-based order. It certainly looks like the orange man-child is throwing a tantrum because it turns out that he can't get the thing he really, really, wants to get.
As a (non-SJ) left-liberal, I do not often feel pride in my nation. Merz, that slimy manifestation of upper class interests and inept populism, is certainly not my chancellor. When Putin attacked Ukraine, what I felt towards my country of birth was mostly relief -- at least this time it was not us bringing large-scale war to Europe, like usually.
Today is the first time I might feel something akin to national pride. Mild pride, mind you, making it clear that we would honor article 5 is a decent thing, not a heroic thing after all.
As @BurdensomeCount has observed, Germany has long been a good little bitch to the US. Abduct our citizens to your extralegal torture prisons, and our spineless politicians will just keep smiling. Tap the phone of our chancellor, and she will voice mild disappointment. When Trump tried to sodomize us with his tariffs, a kink of his which was not expressed by our previous masters and which we definitely do not share, we negotiated for a bit of lubrication but otherwise let him do as he pleased. I suppose Trump was surprised that we have any limits when he announced his intent to fuck Denmark in the eye socket and we actually stood up to him for once.
I don't think that loyalist NATO has the military force to stop the US from taking Greenland. Nor would I want WW3 started over it. However, even if we would lose, I would want soldiers on both sides to die over it, perhaps on the order of 10k. No reason to let the bully get what he wants without making him pay some price in the process, plus visibly cementing our relationship change.
Giving that Trump just broke the US-EU tariff deal, some poor EU diplomats are probably having to start talking with MAGA all over again. Personally, I do not feel it is worth it. Just declare reciprocal tariffs of whatever Trump imposes this week and call it a day. Dealing with the Chaotic Evil Tantrumthrower is just too much of a bother, and we would be better off trading with the Neutral Evil that is China. We should probably try to sell them some ASML EUV machines while they still need them, it is not like they are threatening the peace of the EU.
As a Trump voter who farts in Europe's general direction, I just want to say, I'm fine with this. I'm fine with you guys acting like real countries again, if you decide to try. Because Europe you are just a god damn mess. Everyone loves talking about the decline of the American Empire but Europe holy shit what have you even been doing for the last thirty-five years?
You've regulated your tech industry into non-existence and become a relative backwater, watching your share of global GDP decline by like half. You imported a million zillion Third Worlders who were supposed to prop up your pension systems but mostly just pump up the rape stats. No one will ever let you dismantle the welfare state and something has to give, so you've let your militaries go totally and completely to shit thinking history was over anyway. Now you just sit around begging us for help because a fat old hasbeen like Russia is being mean again, with its GPD like a tenth the size of yours. It's embarrassing.
You never take pride in yourselves? It fuckin' shows. Stand up, if you still can.
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"What's the opposite of shame?"
"Pride?"
"No, not that far from shame."
"Less shame?"
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The Europeans have the opportunity to do the funniest thing here and start negotiating a Russian presence in Greenland (since the only reason America would even want the island is to counter Russia).
Alas, at the behest of the neurotic Baltics, traumatized Poles, and what passes for British foreign policy, playing hardball is anathema to the Europeans for now.
Impossible, the world is changing but the power of inertia is making Europeans stick to the good old storylines
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That genuinely would be a casus bellum though
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It's still not clear to me what exactly the US wants to do with Greenland that they cannot already do. They already have a military base in Greenland and I can't imagine that (before this whole kerfuffle) Denmark would have made a big deal about a larger military presence of the USA in Greenland. Why bully and alienate countries in your sphere of influence to get something you already have?
We don't trust Denmark, and we especially don't trust the people of Greenland. Simple as.
One example I've heard brought up was in 2018, Greenland was courting a Chinese company as a major investor in one of their airports - against the wishes of the Danes I might add! It didn't go through after much controversy, but the fact that Greenland can choose to partner with China, or Russia, or whomever, is a serious risk.
The idea that they're 'in our sphere of influence', and so we can just rely on them to be our buddies forever, is counter to the worldview of the administration. We've seen disasters like the Panama canal, which we gave back to our friends the Panamanians, and which is now de-facto controlled by Chinese companies, and taken the lesson that anything we don't directly control will eventually be co-opted by our enemies. It's not an unreasonable conclusion based on recent history, even if it chafes at our allies in Europe to hear it.
If Trump was proposing it, I'm about 70% likelihood they'd have made a big deal of it.
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Look at a globe and put the north pole at the center of your vision. You have Russia on one side, and America on the other. The arctic is already becoming a sea route, and greenland is positioned to be a major part of that. Canada controls a lot of the territory there, and doesn't have the economy or the will to be a powerful western force.
It's about countering Russia and China. They both want increased presence in our sphere, and Greenland is a good place to assert our control. The Europeans are also incapable of managing this.
This is what people are saying but fail to acknowledge that the US has virtual carte blanch militarily since the end of WWII. They have a standing agreement with Denmark that allows the US to use Greenland with almost no limitations for military purposes. The only limitation was/is no nuclear weapons. A limitation the US was caught breaking during the Cold War, but resulted in a defacto don't ask don't tell policy from Copenhagen.
The US has run down their military presence to one base with about 250 guys hanging around painting rocks and sweeping dirt.
There's two options. One, that this isn't about the stated reasons re: China and Russia. Or two, that somebody in the White House came up with this idea and didn’t know about the standing agreement before they went public.
It would be a matter or routine diplomacy to increase US presence in Greenland from a token force to a significant one. And routine diplomacy to renegotiate the agreement for even more military access and cement a "no chinese access to public or private infrastructures".
Whatever is going on, it doesn't make sense with the information available to the public. The formal integration of Greenland into the US is not in line with the stated goals of the government. It isn't strengthening the geopolitical position of the US, as it's fracturing US/EU relations, and making it more likely that Denmark eventually revokes US access to the territory.
In addition, instead of Slavic attention being pointed across the Baltic, which aligns with the stated anti-Russia goals of the White House, now half the EU is at least considering the deployment of serious assets to Greenland.
Having Denmark send 40 F35s to Greenland instead of hanging over the Baltic is not what the US wants if it's interested in countering Russia.
Either there's something weird going on, or the White House is as incompetent as they've been accused of being.
I'm not american or european. But if this is the best the US can do in favour of the geopolitical strategy to deter China and Russia, the government is totally retarded.
"Let's assert control over an important piece of territory that we already have control over. The Eurocucks won't do anything about it anyway and they won't fight Russia if we want them to. Let's risk blowing up NATO and driving the cringers in Brussels to reneg on all standing defence pacts lol"
This is so against the interests of US geopolitics that I'm surprised to see this view pushed outside of a tweet by a US state senator.
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This is a paper-thin pretext and you should be embarrassed to even give it the time of day, nevermind parrot it. First of all, Russia has ample opportunity to attack the US from thousands of miles of its arctic shoreline with the shortest path not passing over Greenland. The melting of ice will only magnify this as our submarines will be get far more space for maneuver. Second, normal NATO mechanisms allow the US to weaponize Greenland however, and the US is not even demanding more or better terms of military presence. Russia and China in general would have a very hard time securing Greenland, Russian expeditionary capacity is laughable and China would take decades to build theirs.
The simplest explanation is that Trump just wants Greenland, probably to strip mine it. Whether that makes economic sense, I am not sure.
I realize that you've blocked me and won't read this, but I am sure that even trump realizes that Greenland is covered in (on average) 1500 meters of ice, with basically just the coasts actually ice free. Any kind of mining operation would be insanely expensive.
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It’s such a simple explanation that you can’t even…explain it? Strip mine it for what, exactly? Why would Trump care to strip mine Greenland? Does Greenland do a lot of mining (no)? Is there a mysterious resource that Greenland has that nobody else does?
I mean…yes there is: arctic coastline.
And I’m not “parroting” this. This is obvious to anybody who has even a passing interest in geopolitics and has been a topic or conversation for 20 years at least.
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That doesn't answer the objection. The US is allied with Canada and Denmark. The US has a history of working through bases in allies' territory, and already has basing rights on Greenland in particular.
Why pointlessly antagonize regional allies with territorial demands instead of just working with them? (We know the answer)
I think we need to be able to make policy around the Greenland territorial waters. Exactly who is allowed to do what there under international law is immensely consequential.
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We know the answer? What is it?
Canada sounds like they’re currently trying to stoke an alliance with China, and the Europeans refuse to invest any money defense, they just keep trying to guilt us into paying for it. Not only that, but their immigration policies have massively destabilized their own countries.
We need strong partners. Denmark and Canada, at this point, aren’t. Canada just struck a deal to buy a bunch of shirty Saab fighter jets instead of massively superior F35s as a way of trying to spite us, the people paying for their defense.
EU defense spending has been growing for 11 years and is now at least at 20 year highs.
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/defence-numbers/
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Donald Trump is an impulsive bully. He thinks grabbing territory is a big-dick move and is thug-brained enough to not grasp the diplomatic consequences. All this talk about polar competition is clumsy rationalization.
(Or, if we want to go fully tinfoil, "I'm going to invade Greenland jk unless..." is a preferable headline to "I'm a pedophile.")
I wonder if the United States government did anything in the past year that might be construed as hostile towards Canada or otherwise make them doubt the integrity of the relationship?
What problem is being solved by antagonizing them? Canada, in particular, could be totally, absolutely useless and the US would still need their cooperation in the arctic. I know people here love the idea that it's all 4d chess to troll US allies into rearmament, but it's not. It's never 4d chess.
I think it was @DaseindustriesLtd who noted that the Trumpist position is that US allies should pay tribute to the US, provide auxiliaries for US military adventures, and also not expect any help from the US. Unsurprisingly, this is not an especially appealing position.
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Yeah, sounds. What's actually happening behind those doors is "oh shit, please we're sorry about our stupid Boomer electorate for fucking up the country, don't go", in a way that simply isn't symmetric for the US (since the Boomers are more likely to support Trump). A lot of the teeth-gnashing about Trump is because the elites in those countries know that, and having the populace angry means they can blame Trump for their own cascade of failures to reinvest in their own countries (and hence, youth) over the last 20 years. Not that Trump makes himself hard to blame, but I digress.
Hence why the only people who want to muster a workable defense against the US are the Boomers in those countries. It's hard to prosecute a war with septuagenarian soliders.
That's also why the Canadians haven't bought the F-35 yet, of course. How long's it been now, 20 years? Dead pilots only cost a few million. Strange, I wonder why nobody wants to join the Air Force now that we've decided we need one? (confused_travolta.gif)
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Because Trump has got it in his head that great leaders are the ones who expand their country's territory and Greenland seems like the easiest possibility for expanding bigly. I don't think there's anything else to it at this point, the given explanations don't hold water. Just monkey brain going ""Give Greenland me give annex Greenland me annex Greenland give me annex Greenland give me you."
But is he wrong?
Is this the sort of a motive where words like "right" or "wrong" even have any meaning?
I mean: is he wrong about what great leaders do?
In the US context, he's mostly wrong, yeah?
Depending on your political alignment, "best president" lists vary widely, but I don't think I've ever seen one where adding territory was a particularly important criterion? It's not nothing, but domestic economics and policies (JFK on one end or Regan on the other) tend to generally be considered more important that territorial expansion?
Or winning wars (Washington, Lincoln, FDR), I guess, but most of those didn't actually come with territory.
The US is so big already and has so much wilderness already that adding more doesn't really move the needle all that much.
Do you think adding territory is what great leaders do in the modern day? Are there specific leaders you're thinking of?
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Taking Greenland now puts the US in a better position to take Canada later.
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Trump has said repeatedly that it's needed for Golden Dome. This makes me wonder if the US plans to put nuclear interceptors there - Danish territory is nuclear-free, although they let us bend the rules in Greenland during the Cold War and still might.
I suppose another possibility is that we think if we owned the land outright we would be able to better bar security threats from the territory in a way the Danes can't or won't.
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Do the Europoors understand how insulting and alienating this is given their concurrent begging for US help against Russia? Even under Trump something like half of the military aid Ukraine gets is from the United States alone. This Greenland thing would be good cause to pull out of NATO if it wasn’t so impotent and pathetic.
I assume you mean that around half of the equipment sent to Ukraine has a US origin, but paid for by EU money under Trump? Direct US funding has fallen to basically zero under his administration, so I guess that is a win for those seeking to disengage from paying for the conflict directly - the total funding of which was around 0.2% of GDP annually when it was actually being sent in past years. Regan would have died laughing if that was the bill to cause this much of a headache to the Soviet Union.
However, the US could certainly do all kinds of very painful things to further undermine European security and Ukraine in particular for sure, like forbidding the EU from paying the US for weapons, stopping intelligence sharing or pulling out of NATO full stop. Europe is dealing with a reorientation in our relationship with the US, which is certainly likely to leave us all poorer - with only the reward of staying out of future US led entanglements.
You didn't need to call on Article 5 post 911, but you did and found it useful in so many ways, and were the only NATO country to do so. Lets hope for America's sake it never needs to enact it under this Trump presidency, for this is the stupidest prize to burn all that for - Greenland, really? You already had it in everything but name for as many investments and bases as you wanted, and the Danes were paying the subsidies needed to maintain the island into the bargain. This is insanity and the reckless arrogance of Trump spending on America's checkbook of massive power built by saner, stabler minds over a century. The Republican party deserves much better.
Yes, but Russia isn’t the Soviet Union. Europe’s persistent fake befuddlement over why the party of Reagan doesn’t want to support a pack of deracinated, satanist, bioleninist bureaucrats over the (nominal) defenders of autocracy, orthodoxy and nationality isn’t helping.
The other members of NATO pushed to invoke article 5, the United States rolled its eyes and agreed. Then you cucked out the second it became inconvenient and left the United States and Britain to fight alone.
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I still don't quite understand which parts of the European leadership genuinely consider Ukraine a core interest of theirs, which ones are playing the part because of personal obligations to the US (to gaslight their population into believing/accepting US interests as its own), and which ones are doing so because the former two groups have them by the balls. I would've guessed the split is roughly Baltics/Germanics+France/actual Europoors like Spain and Greece.
Since the Greenland "tripwire" deployment is essentially from the second group, they might have thought Greenland is a demand too far after everything they are already surrendering, or (more likely?) see their loyalties as strictly being with the stable "deep state" core of the US and judging the grab for Greenland to be a personal Trump project rather than reflecting an authentic priority of the immortal soul of America.
Well, it's not so much Ukraine per se, but rather not encouraging more wars of territorial expansion.
Why do you figure they would not consider encouraging more wars of territorial expansion in their interest? I think you could make this argument for France (which, uniquely, still has some sensitive possessions all over the world that would be juicy targets for their neighbours), but there at least doesn't seem to be a direct threat from it to anyone else in the EU.
Because the damage from such conflicts tends to outweigh the value of the territory gained; thus everyone involved is less able to afford to buy goods from, and produce goods for sale to, everywhere else. A world in which countries regularly start wars over territory is one in which everyone is worse off.
Twenty years ago, there didn't seem to be a threat to anyone else from Russia.
Fifty years ago, there didn't seem to be a threat to anyone else from Iran.
A century ago, no one thought China would be of any geopolitical significance.
If wars of territorial aggression become normalised, it is far from certain that the grandchildren of the current leadership will not regard their neighbours with envious eyes, and slowly and surely draw their plans against one another.
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It seems perfectly coherent to ask for help against territorial aggression and also hedge against the risk of territorial aggression. This entire Greenland business is absolutely batshit insane on multiple levels. If this were any other president we'd be talking 25A or impeachment.
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Yes, the "europoors" care more about their sovereign territory than tariffs or hypothetical pull backs of Ukraine aid.
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…Does the US understand how insulting it is to insist on tearing part of a resource-rich territory out of your steadfast ally and treaty member on a paper-thin pretext of ChinaRussia?
Yeah you go and do that.
Denmark should offer Putin a base in Greenland next to America’s and see how Trump reacts.
That just gives Trump the pretense he needs to invade militarily.
I think that would shake things up in a profoundly interesting way.
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Trump has stated he plans to seize Greenland by force, putting a tripwire force in place is simply good sense, regardless of what is happening in Ukraine.
I don't know if there's a way to say this that will be well-received, or if it possibly violates some rule for here but reading this post I can only think that you should try taking a break from internet politics and spending some time outside of whatever bubbles you're in.
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Trump insulted Denmark first (and by extension, everyone invested in the European project) by announcing that the US is going to take Greenland. Claiming to be hurt by the European response is hard to take seriously.
The American cries out in pain as he strikes you
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LMAO. Europe needs to get a good kicking to jolt it out of being the USA's little bitch, a position it has dutifully played for the last 75 years. This should be the breaking point but we all know that it'll just lead to more "but muh international law" from spineless leaders as they slowly go along with it. The only good thing going to come out of all this is going to be seeing Europe be on the receiving end of what these countries did and continue to do to the third world.
We all know the next thing that's going to happen is that the US will threaten to pull out of the Ukraine deal unless Europe hands over Greenland, which will be responded to by the Europeans with more moderately worded letters (it shows how cucked the Europe of 2026 is that they don't have the constitution to even send strongly worded letters over direct attacks to their territorial sovereignty).
The only real solution here is to abolish the welfare state, a largesse the continent can no longer afford, and redirect the money into long term capital investments. It'll also massively cut down on illegal immigration once the immigrants very quickly realize they won't be getting much or even anything if they come to Europe.
Hm. Just abolish it? What's your plan for all the disabled people, pensioners without savings, unemployable people, etc?
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Europeans will riot if you abolish the welfare state. It can only happen like Greece during the crisis (although there were still plenty of riots then) where there’s no money and the government says it’s this or we starve. Even the French aren’t there yet.
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You would have to abolish democracy first. They will never do this of their own free will.
I guess this is precisely why the Trump admin is heavily discounting their importance. Many European allies are like a rapidly depreciating currency. By the time you try to cash them in, they're going to be worthless.
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