Trump’s tariff threat on Greenland is a golden opportunity for Starmer – it is time to rejoin the EU

The EU and the UK are in emergency talks on how to face Trump’s latest threat of a 10 per cent tariff on goods from eight countries unless Greenland is sold to the US. The tariffs are to rise to 25 per cent on June 1.

Trump is a business buffoon. His companies have gone bankrupt six times and he failed to launch an airline and a university, and lost his shirt in casinos. He is also ignorant of basic economics.

He has repeatedly described tariffs, which are paid by US consumers and businesses in dollars in the US at the point of importation of foreign goods, as a “subsidy”.

The reality is that if he forces up the prices of goods from eight countries through duties, some of the rise will be carried by the producers, some by the middleman, and in most cases the majority of it by the consumer – Americans.

Trump is impervious to this reality.

Just as he is impervious to advice from longstanding allies that if he smashes Nato, the US will be vulnerable to the very threats from China and Russia that he claims he wants to protect against by bringing Greenland into the US.

Britain has stood by its Nato commitment and sent one officer as a token presence on a token European military mission to Greenland. As the UK has negotiated 10 per cent tariffs with Trump vs the EU’s 15 per cent, it has a little more to lose in a decline in UK-US trade.

But it has a huge amount to gain economically, culturally, and now in terms of its security, if the crisis caused by Trump is seized as an opportunity for Britain to rejoin the EU on terms that bind the UK to the mainland. This would make both parties safer – and stop Putin from dancing a happy jig around the Kremlin.

Last year the UK and the EU failed to agree terms for Britain to join the Security Action for Europe (Safe) programme. This is a €150bn loan mechanism to boost the EU’s defence industrial capacity in the face of Russia’s threat against Europe and invasion of Ukraine.

Britain was asked to stump up €4-6bn as the price of membership. Canada only had to pay $20m, but the UK would have been a full partner, not a “third-party” country with limited access to the funds.

Britain would have been able to benefit enormously from cherry-picking this EU facility without having to go for political integration – which is why the EU set the fee so high.

But that was years ago in Trump time. Last December on our calendars.

The EU needs Britain’s arms industry. And Britain needs the EU economic and security blanket.

The UK’s armed forces are small and impoverished, with their chiefs saying they face a £28bn funding shortfall.

According to a recent report by the Centre for Economic Policy: “By 2025, we estimate that UK GDP per capita was 6–8 per cent lower than it would have been without Brexit. Investment was 12–18 per cent lower, employment 3–4 per cent lower, and productivity 3–4 per cent lower.”

Other estimates put Britain’s losses at lower levels, but there can be no doubt that Brexit has been a strategic economic failure.

The Europeans are not having an easy run either. Per capita GDP growth for the UK from 2016 has been 4.5 per cent, Germany has almost flatlined at 3.6 per cent. France’s is only 7.5 per cent.

The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said US tariffs would hit both sides of the Greenland debate but were a distraction from the "core task" of ending Russia's war in Ukraine.

"China and Russia must be having a field day. They are the ones who benefit from divisions among allies," Kallas said on X.

"Tariffs risk making Europe and the United States poorer and undermine our shared prosperity. If Greenland’s security is at risk, we can address this inside Nato," she added.

The EU needs help from the UK to do that. Britain has much to give the EU: its armed forces and military industries would accelerate and improve the bloc’s security.

Trump’s attacks on the very existence of Nato, his contempt for Europe in general, and his continuing support for Putin’s land grabs mean that the UK could negotiate better terms for re-entering the EU now than it would have done before the US president tore up international law and turned on the US’s oldest friends.

The Greenland crisis is Britain’s best opportunity.