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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   24366 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?

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.

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.

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.

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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