Up to this point in time, Europe has dealt with Trump the way most people would deal with a threatening psychotic: By trying to play his game, showering him with faux civility and pretending to be “reasonable,” while slowly inching back with the ultimate view of escaping to safety.
They’ve been able to maintain this facade because thus far their citizens have allowed them to. But it’s becoming clearer and clearer to Europeans that Trump represents not simply an existential threat to the future of the United States, but to their own futures as well. And unlike Trump, most European leaders still appear to appear to be influenced by the views of their own populations.
That’s why this weekend’s latest outrage may in fact represent a turning point, one that could in fact be quite drastic.
As reported by Shawn McCreesh and Ana Swanson for the New York Times, Trump has now presented our European allies with an ultimatum that is nothing short of pure extortion:
President Trump announced in a social media post on Saturday morning his latest strategy to get control of Greenland: He is slapping new tariffs on a bloc of European nations until they come to the negotiating table to sell Greenland.
Greenland is a territory of Denmark, which will be hit with a 10 percent tariff on all goods sent to the United States beginning on Feb. 1, Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post. Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands and Finland, fellow NATO members that have expressed solidarity with Denmark in its refusal to yield to Mr. Trump’s demands, will also be subject to the 10 percent tariff. If those nations do not relent, he added, the rate will increase to 25 percent on June 1, “until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.”
The reaction of Europe was swift:
The leaders of Europe reacted Saturday with unified outrage to Mr. Trump’s latest coercions on the massive island in the North Atlantic. So, too, did lawmakers in Washington, including some members of the president’s own party.
Whatever the reaction from the U.S. political establishment, the fact must be increasingly clear to Europe that abandoning Greenland is an impossibility not just because of the strategic commitments of NATO but because caving to such extortion would simply invite more of the same. If European leaders don’t realize this, their citizens certainly do.
So if Trump doesn’t back down from this threat, by next week at the latest, I think we can fairly expect a groundswell of support in Europe for severe retaliation, possibly in ways that have only been theoretically discussed up to this point.
As reported in December for The Economic Times:
European governments are quietly debating an extraordinary economic countermeasure as fears grow that US president Donald Trump may strike a deal with Russia that sidelines Ukraine and threatens continental security. According to internal assessments shared within Europe, officials are considering a drastic response: dumping vast holdings of US government debt to destabilize the American economy if Washington abandons its commitments to Ukraine.
The Economic Times is an India-based publication and is not a particularly reputable source, so take that for what it is. If it in fact occurred, however, the “debate” to sell off U.S. debt, surfacing only a few weeks ago, had been tied to perceptions that Trump was about to betray Ukraine. Most economists have dismissed this option as hyperventilating and have suggested that Europe would be doing more harm to itself with such an action, which would devastate not only the U.S. but also the global economy. But it seems equally clear by Trump’s threat against Greenland that the NATO alliance is now on life support regardless, and that such a betrayal of NATO simply may be a matter of not “if” but “when.” So the analogy and the option appear to remain viable, if unlikely, thanks to Trump’s ongoing and probably inevitable betrayal of Ukraine.
A more immediate response being weighed right now is something called the
“anti-coercion instrument,” a framework adopted by the EU in 2023 with a goal towards deterring political coercion on trade.
Europe has a trade weapon specifically created to defend against political coercion quickly and forcefully, and as Mr. Trump’s threats sank in, policymakers argued that this is the time to wield it.
The tool — officially called the “anti-coercion instrument,” unofficially called Europe’s trade “bazooka” — could be used to slap limitations on big American technology companies or other service providers that do large amounts of business on the continent. But using it would sharply ratchet up trans-Atlantic tensions.
Implementation of this measure is complicated and it has never been done before. In short it provides the EU:
“[A] wide choice of response measures. It provides for the possibility of increasing customs duties, restricting importations or exportations, excluding participation in public tenders, and also allows for the non-performance of applicable international obligations in numerous fields (international property rights, insurance, banking, chemicals, and so on).
Importantly, Trump himself is increasing the odds of retaliatory action by angering European citizens with his strident and frankly unbalanced rhetoric. Again, European leaders will tend to listen to their constituents because if they don’t they can find themselves thrown out of office, sometimes rather quickly. So while the possibility of such a massive debt sell-off may be remote (as many have argued), public opinion in Europe is likely to demand some type of significant response.
The Supreme Court could step in and end this insanity by ruling (correctly) that the vast majority of Trump’s tariffs are illegal. It is not clear that the corrupt conservative majority that controls that body will be willing to take this step. However it also seems possible that this would only encourage Trump to take Greenland by military force.
The primary beneficiary of this madness, of course, is Vladimir Putin, who must be positively giddy that his tool in the Oval office has paid these kind of dividends. But America and Americans will suffer the consequences of Trump’s ineptitude for generations to come, as the United States begins its transformation into a global pariah in the eyes of the free world.
