Using the retaliatory tariffs would be less provocative than resorting to the anti-coercion instrument, but would demonstrate that the EU isn’t going to simply roll over in response to Trump’s demands.
The EU has also reached out to Congress, hoping that the threat to NATO and America’s historic relationship with the EU might finally galvanise some Republican opposition to Trump’s presidential over-reach.
There does appear to be a nucleus of opposition within Republican ranks to the plan to acquire Greenland, whether by buying it or, as Trump has threatened, by force, although whether that translates to anything substantive from a Congress that, thanks to Republican majorities, has acceded to almost everything the White House has demanded is an open question.
Why Trump is so insistent on owning Greenland when both Denmark and Greenlanders themselves say the US can, thanks to a 1951 treaty, establish as many military bases as it wants and that they are open to US companies trying to exploit the island’s considerable mineral resources, is unclear.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at the weekend it was because Europe was too weak to guarantee the security of the strategically important territory in the face of Chinese and Russian aggression.
“Europeans project weakness, US projects strength,” he said.
“The president believes enhanced security is not possible without Greenland being part of the US.”
It is unclear why Donald Trump is so insistent on owning Greenland.Credit: Bloomberg
It is uncertain, given that the only information of Trump’s latest tariffs came via a social media post, what authority Trump is relying on to impose tariffs on the eight countries he has identified, although Bessent referred to a “national emergency”.
Asked what that national emergency might be, he replied (bizarrely) that “the national emergency is avoiding the national emergency”.
As the US could assuage its national security concerns without owning Greenland, one suspects that the real reason Trump is so adamant that it should be acquired, or taken by force, is that he is being driven by personal ambition: he wants a legacy of being associated with the large-scale expansion of US territory. Greenland’s land area is larger than that acquired in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 that nearly doubled the then size of America. It’s about Trump’s ego, not national security.
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If the tariffs were to be deployed under the banner of national security, using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) – as most of Trump’s tariffs have been – their threat might be short-lived, or at least postponed until Trump can come up with another mechanism, given that the US Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of the IEEPA tariffs imminently.
It shouldn’t need to be repeated, but if the Supreme Court ticks off on the IEEPA tariffs and the new duties on EU exports to the US are imposed, they would be paid by American importers (contrary to what MAGA believes and some in the White House assert) and add to the cost of goods for American households that are already experiencing affordability challenges.
The cost to its own consumers is why the EU refrained from enacting its own retaliatory tariffs last year.
In threatening to revive them, it knows there would be adverse impacts for its members’ economies, but would hope that their threat might cause Trump to back off, as he has tended to do when others, like China, call his bluffs (the “TACO,” or “Trump Always Chickens Out” trade).
Last year, when confronted by Trump’s decision to impose punitive tariffs on friends and foes alike, the European response was to appease him rather than risk, not just trade with America, but the future of the NATO alliance at a moment when, with Russia invading Ukraine, an under-prepared Europe needed it.
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Trump’s assault on Denmark and Greenland’s sovereignty, and the reality that the EU can’t deliver what Trump is demanding, however, makes appeasement and the fawning flattery that the Europeans deployed to stroke Trump’s ego non-viable options.
Unless Congress or the Supreme Court intervene, Europe will have to confront some very difficult questions about its own sovereignty and integrity and its place within a world where it can no longer see the US as its major trading partner and a long-standing and protective ally. Russia and China would be struggling to contain their glee at that prospect.
