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Throughout his first and second terms, Donald Trump has pushed the boundaries of what seems thinkable from a US president. His threats towards Greenland, though, feel like a turning point. His tariff blackmail over the Arctic island has left America and Europe on the verge of economic confrontation. Were the US to make a move on the Danish territory this could spell the end of Nato. Whether Trump can be talked down from his threats is now an existential question for the post-1945 transatlantic alliance.
Europe cannot afford to roll over and allow Trump’s threatened tariffs on six EU states plus the UK and Norway, should they happen, to go unanswered. This US president penalises perceived weakness, and vital issues of principle are at stake. Yet European leaders should be wary of unleashing an escalatory spiral that could spin out of control. They must leave open space for creative negotiated solutions.
For the Europeans, calibrating next steps should start with a clear-headed evaluation of strengths and weaknesses. Despite Europe’s economic heft, its reliance on the US for everything from cloud computing to support for Ukraine gives the White House escalation dominance. China forced Trump into a partial tariffs climbdown last year by threatening restrictions on rare earths. Europe lacks a trade weapon of comparable potency and, unlike Beijing, has not spent years gaming out confrontations with the US.
Not being China, though, cuts both ways. Unlike with Beijing, much of the US political, security and business community would regard with horror the prospect of full-scale rupture with Europe. Europeans should realise they are dealing with Trump and his circle, not a united American establishment.
The US president is dangerous since waning domestic ratings and an affordability crisis give him every incentive to create distractions. Yet even on his stunning capture of Venezuela’s dictator Nicolás Maduro, polling shows the US public is divided. Support for using the US military against Greenland is far thinner. US Treasuries and the dollar have reacted badly to Trump’s threats, and the Supreme Court may soon rule against his legal basis for tariffs.
All of this suggests Europe should combine a robust trade riposte with continued, vigorous, political engagement. The EU would be right to suspend last year’s EU-US trade deal, which resolved a then looming trade war but in effect legitimised Trump’s use of tariffs as coercion. The bloc should stand ready to impose its retaliatory tariffs on $93bn of US goods if Trump’s new measures go ahead. The EU may need, in time, to activate its anti-coercion instrument, enabling it to go further. But a French call for it to do so is not necessarily helpful right now.
The EU, the UK and Norway’s political messaging should be threefold. First, despite Trump’s insistence on the psychological need for “ownership”, the US can achieve all its security and economic goals in Greenland without owning the island. Second, Nato is willing to do more to boost Arctic security — even if a tiny Greenland exercise by the eight countries now targeted for tariffs appears to have been misconstrued by Trump as a provocation. Third, Nato’s collapse would conversely be bad for US and Arctic security by destroying co-operation in the north Atlantic — quite apart from emboldening Moscow.
Dissuading Trump, though, should not just be up to Europeans. While some Republicans have publicly, if belatedly, broken with the president on Greenland, more lawmakers and business leaders should speak out. Even if the US has borne a disproportionate share of the transatlantic alliance’s military burden, it has derived vast benefits, in terms of commerce, security and projection of influence. To allow Trump to blow it up over Greenland would be the height of folly.