Trump cancels tariff threat over Greenland, says NATO agreed to ‘framework’ of future Arctic deal

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump an­nounced Wednes­day that he was scrap­ping his planned tar­iffs on eight Eu­ro­pean na­tions in an ef­fort to force U.S. con­trol over Green­land, pulling a dra­mat­ic re­ver­sal short­ly af­ter in­sist­ing he want­ed to get the is­land “in­clud­ing right, ti­tle and own­er­ship.”

In a post on his so­cial me­dia site, Trump said he had agreed with the head of NA­TO on a “frame­work of a fu­ture deal” on Arc­tic se­cu­ri­ty, po­ten­tial­ly de­fus­ing ten­sion that had far-reach­ing geopo­lit­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions.

He said “ad­di­tion­al dis­cus­sions” on Green­land were be­ing held con­cern­ing the Gold­en Dome mis­sile de­fense pro­gram, a mul­ti­lay­ered, $175 bil­lion sys­tem that for the first time will put U.S. weapons in space.

In a sub­se­quent in­ter­view with CN­BC, Trump of­fered few de­tails but de­scribed the agree­ment reached as a “for­ev­er deal” and boast­ed, “Now we’re go­ing to have even bet­ter se­cu­ri­ty than we would have had be­fore.”

Trump has backed off tar­iffs be­fore

The pres­i­dent has threat­ened tar­iffs be­fore on­ly to back away. In April, af­ter first say­ing he would slap mas­sive im­port levies on na­tions from around the world, which prompt­ed a sharp neg­a­tive mar­ket re­ac­tion, Trump eased off.

But his change of heart this time came on­ly af­ter he used his speech at the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum in the Swiss Alps to fo­cus on Green­land and threat­ened to up­end NA­TO, an al­liance that has been among the globe’s most un­shak­able since the ear­ly days of the Cold War.

In his ad­dress, Trump said he was ask­ing for ter­ri­to­ry that was “cold and poor­ly lo­cat­ed” and that the U.S. had ef­fec­tive­ly saved Eu­rope dur­ing World War II while de­clar­ing of NA­TO: “It’s a very small ask com­pared to what we have giv­en them for many, many decades.”

“We prob­a­bly won’t get any­thing un­less I de­cide to use ex­ces­sive strength and force, where we would be frankly un­stop­pable. But I won’t do that, OK?” Trump said, lat­er adding, “I don’t have to” and “I don’t want to use force.”

But Trump has al­so said re­peat­ed­ly that, while the U.S. will de­fend NA­TO, he wasn’t con­vinced the al­liance will back­up Wash­ing­ton, if need­ed, and sug­gest­ed that was at least part of the rea­son for his ag­gres­sive stance to­ward Green­land.

His sen­ti­ments prompt­ed NA­TO Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Mark Rutte, in a post-speech event with Trump, to say that the al­liance would stand with the U.S. if it is at­tacked.

“You can be as­sured, ab­solute­ly,” Rutte said, adding, “your al­lies will be with you,” Rutte told Trump.

A short time lat­er came Trump’s post can­cel­ing the tar­iffs.

Pres­i­dent cites US na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty

Trump ar­gues that the U.S. needs Green­land for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and to counter threats from Rus­sia and Chi­na in the Arc­tic re­gion, de­spite Amer­i­ca al­ready hav­ing a large mil­i­tary base there. He threat­ened to im­pose steep U.S. im­port tax­es on Den­mark and sev­en oth­er al­lies un­less they ne­go­ti­ate a trans­fer of the se­mi-au­tonomous ter­ri­to­ry.

The tar­iffs were to have start­ed at 10% next month and climb to 25% in June.

Trump of­ten tries to in­crease pres­sure on the oth­er side when he be­lieves it can lead to a fa­vor­able agree­ment. His threats at Davos ap­peared on the verge of rup­tur­ing NA­TO, which was found­ed by lead­ing Eu­ro­pean na­tions, the U.S. and Cana­da to counter the So­vi­et Union.

The al­liance’s oth­er mem­bers were stead­fast in say­ing Green­land is not for sale and can­not be wrest­ed from Den­mark, while an­gri­ly re­ject­ing Trump’s promised tar­iffs.

A Dan­ish gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press af­ter Trump’s speech that Copen­hagen was ready to dis­cuss U.S. se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns. But the of­fi­cial, who was not au­tho­rized to com­ment pub­licly and spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, un­der­scored the gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion that “red lines”— name­ly Den­mark’s sov­er­eign­ty — must be re­spect­ed.

It was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear how Trump’s can­cel­ing of tar­iffs might change such cal­cu­la­tions.

Green­land tells cit­i­zens to pre­pare

In the mean­time, Green­land’s gov­ern­ment re­spond­ed by telling its cit­i­zens to be pre­pared. It has pub­lished a hand­book in Eng­lish and Green­landic on what to do in a cri­sis that urges res­i­dents to en­sure they have suf­fi­cient food, wa­ter, fu­el and sup­plies at home to sur­vive for five days.

“We just went to the gro­cery store and bought the sup­plies,” said Tony Jakob­sen in Green­land’s cap­i­tal Nuuk said, show­ing off the con­tents of bags that in­clud­ed can­dles, snacks and toi­let pa­per.

Jakob­sen said he thought Trump’s rhetoric to­wards Green­land was “just threats… but it’s bet­ter to be ready than not ready.”

Be­fore back­ing down, Trump had urged Den­mark and the rest of NA­TO to stand aside, adding an omi­nous warn­ing.

“We want a piece of ice for world pro­tec­tion, and they won’t give it,” Trump said. “You can say yes, and we will be very ap­pre­cia­tive. Or you can say no, and we will re­mem­ber.”

He al­so called for open­ing “im­me­di­ate ne­go­ti­a­tions” for the U.S. to ac­quire Green­land. In sub­se­quent com­ments to re­porters, he de­clined to name a price that might be paid, say­ing on­ly, “There’s a big­ger price, and that’s the price of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.”

His ar­rival in Davos was de­layed af­ter a mi­nor elec­tri­cal prob­lem on Air Force One forced a re­turn to Wash­ing­ton to switch air­craft. As Trump’s mo­tor­cade head­ed down a nar­row road to the speech site, on­look­ers — in­clud­ing some skiers — lined the route. Some made ob­scene ges­tures, and one held up a pa­per curs­ing the pres­i­dent.

Af­ter his ad­dress, Trump met with the lead­ers of Poland, Bel­gium and Egypt.

Fi­nan­cial mar­kets that had fall­en sharply on Trump’s threat­ened tar­iffs bounced back Wednes­day. Al­so breath­ing a sigh of re­lief were a num­ber of U.S. of­fi­cials who had al­so been con­cerned that Trump’s hard-line stance and bel­li­cose rhetoric to­ward Green­land, Den­mark and oth­er NA­TO al­lies could harm oth­er for­eign pol­i­cy goals.

Trump’s hous­ing plan over­shad­owed

Trump Davos speech was sup­posed to fo­cus on how to low­er U.S. hous­ing prices — part of a larg­er ef­fort to bring down the cost of liv­ing, which could prove a li­a­bil­i­ty for the pres­i­dent’s par­ty of No­vem­ber’s midterm elec­tions.

Green­land in­stead car­ried the day, with Trump lash­ing out at Den­mark for be­ing “un­grate­ful” for the U.S. pro­tec­tion of the Arc­tic is­land dur­ing the Sec­ond World War. He al­so mis­tak­en­ly re­ferred to Ice­land, mix­ing up that coun­try with Green­land four times dur­ing his speech and for the fifth time since Tues­day.

“This enor­mous un­se­cured is­land is ac­tu­al­ly part of North Amer­i­ca,” Trump said. “That’s our ter­ri­to­ry.”

When he fi­nal­ly did men­tion hous­ing, Trump sug­gest­ed he did not sup­port a mea­sure to en­cour­age af­ford­abil­i­ty. He said bring­ing down ris­ing home prices hurts prop­er­ty val­ues and makes home­own­ers who once felt wealthy be­cause of the eq­ui­ty in their hous­es feel poor­er.

Green­land man tries to ‘be pre­pared for al­most any­thing’

Be­fore Trump an­nounced that he was aban­don­ing the tar­iffs and po­ten­tial­ly eas­ing in­ter­na­tion­al pres­sure, his speech left peo­ple in Nuuk prepar­ing for the worst.

Res­i­dent John­ny Hede­mann said it was “in­sult­ing” that Trump “talks about the Green­landic peo­ple and the Green­landic na­tion as just an ice cube.” He spoke while head­ing out to buy a camp­ing stove and in­stant mashed pota­toes.

“Liv­ing in this na­ture, you have to be pre­pared for al­most any­thing. And now there’s an­oth­er threat — and that’s Trump,” Hede­mann said.