Donald Trump threatened a 25% tariff on a slew of European countries including Denmark, Germany, France and the UK – until the US is allowed to purchase Greenland, in an extraordinary escalation of the president’s bid to claim the autonomous Danish territory.
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, “on any and all goods sent to the United States of America”.
He said the tariff will increase to 25% on 1 June.
“This Tariff will be due and payable until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland,” Trump said.
The president’s longstanding interest in acquiring Greenland “one way or the other” has become a fixation since the US raid that captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro earlier in January. While he has claimed the Arctic territory’s current status poses a national security threat to the US, this has been disputed by US allies, including Denmark.
In the Saturday morning post, Trump said Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland “have journeyed to Greenland, for purposes unknown”. It was an apparent reference to Nato allies deploying troops in Greenland on Thursday in response to Trump’s threats to forcefully take the Arctic island, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark.
Trump suggested, incorrectly, that residents of Greenland “currently have two dogsleds as protection” – and claimed “China and Russia want Greenland” to the detriment of the US. “Nobody will touch this sacred piece of land, especially since the national security of the United States, and the world at large, is at stake,” Trump wrote.
“The President’s statement comes as a surprise,” Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Denmark’s foreign minister, responded on social media. “Earlier 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.”
“Every insult, threat, tariff and lie that we receive strengthens our resolve,” Rasmus Jarlov, the conservative chair of Denmark’s defence committee, wrote in more direct language. “The 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.”
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’s rage.
In response to Trump’s comments on Saturday, the EU commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said in a statement that the Europeans “have 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.”
“The EU stands in full solidarity with Denmark and the people of Greenland,” she added. “Tariffs would undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral.”
“Our position on Greenland is very clear – it is part of the Kingdom of Denmark and its future is a matter for the Greenlanders and the Danes,” the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, said. “We have also made clear that Arctic security matters for the whole of Nato and allies should all do more together to address the threat from Russia across different parts of the Arctic. Applying 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.”
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, drew an implicit comparison between Trump’s threats to seize Greenland and Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. “No intimidation or threat will influence us – neither in Ukraine, nor in Greenland, nor anywhere else in the world when we are confronted with such situations,” Macron wrote in a social media riposte to Trump. “Tariff threats are unacceptable and have no place in this context. Europeans will respond in a united and coordinated manner should they be confirmed. We will ensure that European sovereignty is upheld.”
Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, whose excellence at golf previously made him something of a Trump whisperer, echoed the warning about a potential “downward spiral”.
“We will not let ourselves be blackmailed,” the Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, added. That sentiment was echoed by Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, who wrote: “Threats have no place among allies.”
Germany’s leadership was more reserved, with the German chancellor Friedrich Merz leaving it to his spokesperson, Stefan Kornelius, to say only that the government “has taken note of” Trump’s statements and plans to coordinate with allies to “decide on appropriate responses at the appropriate time”.
On Friday, however, a spokesperson on foreign policy for the chancellor’s Christian Democrat party, Jürgen Hardt, suggested that Germany could threaten to boycott the World Cup Trump is hosting this summer “as a last resort in order to get Trump to see sense on the Greenland issue”. Polling done before Trump’s 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.
Even before the new tariff threat, there were mass protests in Greenland and Denmark on Saturday against Trump’s efforts to “acquire” the island.
His latest tariff threat comes just eight months after Trump announced that he had struck a trade pact with the UK – and six months after he announced a pact with the European Union.
The UK would have protection against future US tariffs “because I like them”, Trump declared in the summer. He described the pact with the EU as a “powerful deal” and an “important” partnership.
The president has repeatedly turned to tariffs in a bid to force countries to bend to his will – 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’s exports to the US.
Trump, who has previously extolled the benefits of tariffs as a negotiating tool, stressed on Saturday that the US was “immediately open to negotiation” with Denmark and any of the countries it was threatening to hit with these new tariffs.
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.
While the White House has played down such concerns, a vast wave of tariffs unveiled by Trump last spring – when he proclaimed the start of a new era for the US economy – was quickly reversed as global markets fell sharply.
But his administration’s 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 Yalethe highest level since 1935.
The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said recently that Greenland’s defence is a “common concern” 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.
Fewer than one in five of Americans approve of Trump’s 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.
Much of Trump’s 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.
