Donald Trump threatened a 25% tariff on a slew of European countries including Denmark, Germany, France and the UK – until the US is allowed to purchase Greenland, in an extraordinary escalation of the president’s bid to claim the autonomous Danish territory.
In a lengthy post on Saturday on Truth Social, Trump said he would impose a 10% tariff on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland beginning 1 February, “on any and all goods sent to the United States of America”.
He said the tariff will increase to 25% on 1 June.
“This Tariff will be due and payable until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland,” Trump said.
The president’s interest in Greenland intensified following the US raid that captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro earlier in January. While he has claimed the Arctic territory’s current status poses a national security threat to the US, this has been disputed by US allies, including Denmark.
In the Saturday morning post, Trump said Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland “have journeyed to Greenland, for purposes unknown”. It was an apparent reference to Nato allies deploying troops in Greenland on Thursday in response to Trump’s threats to forcefully take the Arctic island, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark.
Trump suggested, incorrectly, that residents of Greenland “currently have two dogsleds as protection” – and claimed “China and Russia want Greenland” to the detriment of the US. “Nobody will touch this sacred piece of land, especially since the national security of the United States, and the world at large, is at stake,” Trump wrote.
His latest tariff threat comes just eight months after Trump announced that he had struck a trade pact with the UK – and six months after he announced a pact with the European Union.
The UK would have protection against future US tariffs “because I like them”, Trump declared in the summer. He described the pact with the EU as a “powerful deal” and an “important” partnership.
His threat to impose tariffs within days on a string of European allies is set to challenge relations. In the UK, senior political figures including Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, and Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, swiftly rebuked the move.
“These Countries, who are playing this very dangerous game, have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable,” Trump claimed in his post. “Therefore, it is imperative that, in order to protect Global Peace and Security, strong measures be taken so that this potentially perilous situation end quickly, and without question.”
The president has repeatedly turned to tariffs in a bid to force countries to bend to his will – with some success. Days after returning to office for his second term in early 2025, Colombia agreed to accept military aircraft carrying deported migrants after Trump threatened steep duties on the country’s exports to the US.
Trump, who has previously extolled the benefits of tariffs as a negotiating tool, stressed on Saturday that the US was “immediately open to negotiation” with Denmark and any of the countries it was threatening to hit with these new tariffs.
His aggressive global trade strategy has raised fears for the US economy, which analysts and policymakers have warned could face significant damage from sweeping tariffs on the world.
While the White House has played down such concerns, a vast wave of tariffs unveiled by Trump last spring – when he proclaimed the start of a new era for the US economy – was quickly reversed as global markets fell sharply.
But his administration’s erratic rollout of other tariffs nevertheless significantly strained US trade ties with the world. Americans now face an overall average effective tariff rate of 16.8%, according to the Budget Lab at Yale, the highest level since 1935.
The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said recently that Greenland’s defence is a “common concern” for the whole of Nato. The Guardian reported that European troops had deployed to Greenland, in part, to establish what a more sustained ground deployment on the territory could look like, and partly to reassure the US that European Nato members were serious about Arctic security.
Fewer than one in five of Americans approve of Trump’s efforts to acquire Greenland, a poll published on Thursday by Reuters/Ipsos found. Both Democrats and Republicans oppose the effort, and only 4% of Americans think the US should take Greenland using military force.
Much of Trump’s wider trade strategy is currently in the hands of the US supreme court, which is mulling whether the imposition of many of his tariffs was legal. A decision could be announced as early as next week.
