Trump proposes 10% tariff for Europe over Greenland opposition

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said Sat­ur­day that he would charge a 10% im­port tax start­ing in Feb­ru­ary on goods from eight Eu­ro­pean na­tions be­cause of their op­po­si­tion to Amer­i­can con­trol of Green­land, set­ting up a po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous test of U.S. part­ner­ships in Eu­rope.

Den­mark, Nor­way, Swe­den, France, Ger­many, the Unit­ed King­dom, the Nether­lands and Fin­land would face the tar­iff, Trump said in a so­cial me­dia post while at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Flori­da. The rate would climb to 25% on June 1 if no deal was in place for “the Com­plete and To­tal pur­chase of Green­land” by the Unit­ed States, he said.

The Re­pub­li­can pres­i­dent ap­peared to in­di­cate that he was us­ing the tar­iffs as lever­age to force talks with Den­mark and oth­er Eu­ro­pean coun­tries over the sta­tus of Green­land, a semi­au­tonomous ter­ri­to­ry of NA­TO al­ly Den­mark that he re­gards as crit­i­cal to U.S. na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

“The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca is im­me­di­ate­ly open to ne­go­ti­a­tion with Den­mark and/or any of these Coun­tries that have put so much at risk, de­spite all that we have done for them,” Trump said on Truth So­cial.

The tar­iff threat could mark a prob­lem­at­ic rup­ture be­tween Trump and Amer­i­ca’s long­time NA­TO part­ners, fur­ther strain­ing an al­liance that dates to 1949 and pro­vides a col­lec­tive de­gree of se­cu­ri­ty to Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca. Trump has re­peat­ed­ly tried to use trade penal­ties to bend al­lies and ri­vals alike to his will, gen­er­at­ing in­vest­ment com­mit­ments from some na­tions and push­back from oth­ers, no­tably Chi­na.

Trump is sched­uled to trav­el on Tues­day to the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum in Davos, Switzer­land, where he like­ly will run in­to the Eu­ro­pean lead­ers he just threat­ened with tar­iffs that would start in lit­tle more than two weeks.

Eu­ro­pean Coun­cil Pres­i­dent An­tónio Cos­ta, who was in Paraguay sign­ing a trade agree­ment with the Mer­co­sur bloc of South Amer­i­can coun­tries, said he was co­or­di­nat­ing a joint re­sponse from Eu­ro­pean Union mem­ber states on the new U.S. tar­iff threat.

There are im­me­di­ate ques­tions about how the White House could try to im­ple­ment the tar­iffs be­cause the EU is a sin­gle eco­nom­ic zone in terms of trad­ing, ac­cord­ing to a Eu­ro­pean diplo­mat who was not au­tho­rized to com­ment pub­licly and spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty. It was un­clear, too, how Trump could act un­der U.S. law, though he could cite emer­gency eco­nom­ic pow­ers that are cur­rent­ly sub­ject to a U.S. Supreme Court chal­lenge.

Trump has long said he thinks the U.S. should own the strate­gi­cal­ly lo­cat­ed and min­er­al-rich is­land, which has a pop­u­la­tion of about 57,000 and whose de­fense is pro­vid­ed by Den­mark. He in­ten­si­fied his calls a day af­ter the mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion to oust Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro ear­li­er this month.

The pres­i­dent in­di­cat­ed the tar­iffs were re­tal­i­a­tion for what ap­peared to be the de­ploy­ment of s ym­bol­ic lev­els of troops from the Eu­ro­pean coun­tries to Green­land, which he has said was es­sen­tial for the “Gold­en Dome” mis­sile de­fense sys­tem for the U.S., He al­so has ar­gued that Rus­sia and Chi­na might try to take over the is­land.

The U.S. al­ready has ac­cess to Green­land un­der a 1951 de­fense agree­ment. Since 1945, the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary pres­ence in Green­land has de­creased from thou­sands of sol­diers over 17 bases and in­stal­la­tions to 200 at the re­mote Pituffik Space Base in the north­west of the is­land, the Dan­ish for­eign min­is­ter has said. That base sup­ports mis­sile warn­ing, mis­sile de­fense and space sur­veil­lance op­er­a­tions for the U.S. and NA­TO.

Re­sis­tance has steadi­ly built in Eu­rope to Trump’s am­bi­tions even as sev­er­al coun­tries on the con­ti­nent agreed to his 15% tar­iffs last year in or­der to pre­serve an eco­nom­ic and se­cu­ri­ty re­la­tion­ship with Wash­ing­ton.

‘Im­por­tant for the whole world’

Ear­li­er Sat­ur­day, hun­dreds of peo­ple in Green­land’s cap­i­tal, Nuuk, braved near-freez­ing tem­per­a­tures, rain and icy streets to march in a ral­ly in sup­port of their own self-gov­er­nance.

Thou­sands of peo­ple al­so marched through Copen­hagen, many of them car­ry­ing Green­land’s flag. Some held signs with slo­gans such as “Make Amer­i­ca Smart Again” and “Hands Off.”

“This is im­por­tant for the whole world,” Dan­ish pro­test­er Elise Riechie told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press as she held Dan­ish and Green­landic flags. “There are many small coun­tries. None of them are for sale.”

The ral­lies oc­curred hours af­ter a bi­par­ti­san del­e­ga­tion of U.S. law­mak­ers, while vis­it­ing Copen­hagen, sought to re­as­sure Den­mark and Green­land of their sup­port.

Dan­ish Maj. Gen. Søren An­der­sen, leader of the Joint Arc­tic Com­mand, told the AP that Den­mark does not ex­pect the U.S. mil­i­tary to at­tack Green­land, or any oth­er NA­TO al­ly, and that Eu­ro­pean troops were re­cent­ly de­ployed to Nuuk for Arc­tic de­fense train­ing.

He said the goal is not to send a mes­sage to the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, even through the White House has not ruled out tak­ing the ter­ri­to­ry by force.

“I will not go in­to the po­lit­i­cal part, but I will say that I would nev­er ex­pect a NA­TO coun­try to at­tack an­oth­er NA­TO coun­try,” he said from aboard a Dan­ish mil­i­tary ves­sel docked in Nuuk. “For us, for me, it’s not about sig­nal­ing. It is ac­tu­al­ly about train­ing mil­i­tary units, work­ing to­geth­er with al­lies.”

The Dan­ish mil­i­tary or­ga­nized a plan­ning meet­ing Fri­day in Green­land with NA­TO al­lies, in­clud­ing the U.S., to dis­cuss Arc­tic se­cu­ri­ty on the al­liance’s north­ern flank in the face of a po­ten­tial Russ­ian threat. The Amer­i­cans were al­so in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in Op­er­a­tion Arc­tic En­durance in Green­land in the com­ing days, An­der­sen said.

In his 2½ years as a com­man­der in Green­land, An­der­sen said that he hasn’t seen any Chi­nese or Russ­ian com­bat ves­sels or war­ships, de­spite Trump say­ing that they were off the is­land’s coast.

But in the un­like­ly event of Amer­i­can troops us­ing force on Dan­ish soil, An­der­sen con­firmed that Dan­ish sol­diers have an oblig­a­tion to fight back.

‘Al­most no bet­ter’ al­ly to US than Den­mark

Trump has con­tend­ed that Chi­na and Rus­sia have their own de­signs on Green­land and its vast un­tapped re­serves of crit­i­cal min­er­als. He said re­cent­ly that any­thing less than the Arc­tic is­land be­ing in U.S. hands would be “un­ac­cept­able.”

The pres­i­dent has seen tar­iffs as a tool to get what he wants with­out hav­ing to re­sort to mil­i­tary ac­tions. At the White House on Fri­day, he re­count­ed how he had threat­ened Eu­ro­pean al­lies with tar­iffs on phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and he teased the pos­si­bil­i­ty of do­ing so again.

“I may do that for Green­land, too,” Trump said.

Af­ter Trump fol­lowed through, Rep. Don Ba­con, R-Neb., said “Con­gress must re­claim tar­iff au­thor­i­ties” so that they are not used sole­ly at a pres­i­dent’s dis­cre­tion.

Eu­ro­pean lead­ers have said it is on­ly for Den­mark and Green­land to de­cide on mat­ters con­cern­ing the ter­ri­to­ry, and Den­mark said this week that it was in­creas­ing its mil­i­tary pres­ence in Green­land in co­op­er­a­tion with al­lies.

“There is al­most no bet­ter al­ly to the Unit­ed States than Den­mark,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., while vis­it­ing Copen­hagen with oth­er mem­bers of Con­gress. “If we do things that cause Danes to ques­tion whether we can be count­ed on as a NA­TO al­ly, why would any oth­er coun­try seek to be our al­ly or be­lieve in our rep­re­sen­ta­tions?”

Bur­rows re­port­ed from Nuuk, Gree­land, and Nie­mann from Copen­hagen, Den­mark. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Ste­fanie Dazio in Berlin, Aamer Mad­hani in Wash­ing­ton and Kwiyeon Ha and Evgeniy Mal­o­let­ka in Nuuk, Green­land con­tributed to this re­port.

By JOSH BOAK, EM­MA BUR­ROWS and DANIEL NIE­MANN

WEST PALM BEACH, Flori­da (AP)