US president says 10 percent tariffs will be imposed on eight countries over their opposition to US control of the self-governing Danish territory.
United States President Donald Trump has pledged a series of increasing tariffs on several European allies for their opposition to US control of Greenland, as he escalates his campaign to acquire the self-governing territory of Denmark.
In a post on his platform, Truth Social, on Saturday, Trump said 10 percent tariffs would come into effect on February 1 for Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
He added that these tariffs would rise to 25 percent on June 1 and continue until an agreement is reached for the US to buy Greenland.
European leaders rejected Trump’s announcement, with French President Emmanuel Macron saying that “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”.
“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,” Macron wrote on the social media platform X.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer was unusually blunt in condemning Trump’s threat, saying on X that his country would raise the issue directly with Washington. “Applying tariffs on allies for pursuing the collective security of NATO allies is completely wrong,” he said.
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said tariffs would undermine prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic, making both Europe and the US poorer. ”China and Russia must be having a field day. They are the ones who benefit from divisions among allies,” she said in a post on X.
Trump indicated in his lengthy social media post that the tariffs were being imposed in retaliation for trips the countries’ representatives took to Greenland “for purposes unknown”. He accused all eight of playing a “very dangerous game” in opposing US control over the territory.
The US had been trying to buy Greenland “for over 150 years”, he said, adding that the “need to AQUIRE” the territory had become all the more essential for the planned US missile defence shield known as the Golden Dome, which would include the “possible protection of Canada”.
Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna said that Trump’s move was “an unprecedented step”.
“Clearly, President Trump is taking this very seriously, imposing tariffs against the US’s closest allies,” he said, noting the US president’s characteristically capitalised warnings on the “safety, security and survival of our planet”.
Protests in Denmark and Greenland
Trump’s announcement came as thousands of people rallied in cities across Denmark to reject the Republican president’s repeated threats to take control of Greenland.
In the capital, Copenhagen, protesters waved the flags of Denmark and Copenhagen, and chanted slogans such as “Kalaallit Nunaat”, the Arctic island’s name in Greenlandic.
And in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, hundreds of people braved near-freezing temperatures, rain and icy streets to march in a rally in support of their own self-governance.
Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, who reported live from the Nuuk demonstration, said that for people returning from today’s protests, news of Trump “upping the ante” with his tariffs would be “very worrying indeed”.
“They know that there is nothing that they could do if Donald Trump really did want to send in the troops,” he said.
“Denmark knows there is nothing, really, that they could do if Donald Trump really wants to send the troops. What they have been trying to do over the last weeks is to reassure him that they can take Arctic security seriously,” he added.
Internal NATO spat
The threat of tariffs takes what Challands described as “an internal NATO” spat to a new level, marking a potentially dangerous escalation of tensions that will place further strain on an alliance that dates to 1949 and provides a collective degree of security to Europe and North America.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has for months insisted that the US should control Greenland. Earlier this week, he said that anything less than the Arctic island being in US hands would be “unacceptable”.
According to the latest poll, published in January last year, 85 percent of Greenlanders oppose the territory joining the US, while only 6 percent are in favour.
While Greenland and Denmark have rejected the idea of the island being “owned” by the US, efforts to get the US administration to change its stance have so far appeared to have failed.
“It’s clear that the president has this wish of conquering over Greenland,” Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, told reporters this week after a meeting in Washington, DC, with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
