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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   24001 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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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.

For starters, inflation is running below projections. In December, the just-announced inflation rate was 2.7 percent. The Fed’s favorite indicator was unchanged from November when the core inflation rate, at 2.6 percent, was the lowest since 2021.

Tariffs have had surprisingly little impact on higher consumer prices. “Tariff pass‑through to consumers has been much milder than anticipated,” Olu Sonola, head of U.S. economic research at Fitch Ratings, wrote in a recent research note. Yet revenue from tariffs brought in close to $300 billion in 2025, up from about $80 billion in 2024, and is currently on track to produce over $350 billion this year.

The evidence suggests that most costs are being absorbed by foreign exporters or by domestic sellers accepting lower profit margins. And since the actual tariffs on different countries are a crazy quilt of different rates, producers have also become expert at shifting their supply chains to countries with relatively lower tariffs. In addition, it’s easy to overstate the impact of tariffs on household costs, since imports are only about 14 percent of GDP. In other words, there are no tariffs on 86 percent of GDP.

The high tariff rate on China skews the averages. Excluding China, the effective tariff rate on the rest of the world, adjusting for trade share and exempt categories, is not the average 17 percent. It’s well below 10 percent. Thanks in part to the tariffs, the chronic U.S. global trade deficit has been shrinking. The October deficit was $29.4 billion, down nearly 40 percent from September. The decline continued in November, the last month for which statistics are available.

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.

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.

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

If Trump was proposing it, I'm about 70% likelihood they'd have made a big deal of it.

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.

It's about countering Russia and China. They both want increased presence in our sphere

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.

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.

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)

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.

Canada sounds like they’re currently trying to stoke an alliance with China

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.

Not only that, but their immigration policies have massively destabilized their own countries.

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.

the Europeans refuse to invest any money defense, they just keep trying to guilt us into paying for it.

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)

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?

Taking Greenland now puts the US in a better position to take Canada later.

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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