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Donald Trump said he was “100 per cent” committed to following through on his threat to tariff eight countries as exasperated Danish and European officials stiffened their resistance while hoping for a diplomatic off-ramp for the U.S. president’s designs on Greenland.
In a brief telephone interview with NBC News on Monday, Trump said he would follow through on the threats but offered a “no comment” to a question of whether the U.S. would try and seize Greenland by force.
Trump announced planned tariffs this weekend on eight countries that sent small numbers of military personnel to Greenland last week, following the U.S. president’s repeated statements that he wanted to take over Denmark’s vast Arctic island.
Trump said the tariffs of 10 per cent would go into effect on Feb. 1 and rise to 25 per cent on June 1.
“We are living in 2026, you can trade with people, but you don’t trade people,” Denmark’s Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said during a visit to London on Monday.
Rasmussen said it was time for the European Union and NATO to unite so that a solution can be worked out with the Americans. Rasmussen said he was “surprised” the issue has come up yet again, and that he and Trump had discussed Greenland years ago when he was Danish prime minister through 2019.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday that U.K. would try to stop the U.S. from imposing tariffs on European countries who oppose its efforts to acquire Greenland, saying tariffs ‘should not be used against allies in this way.’
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, at an emergency press conference on Monday in London, said he would use “the full strength of government” to try to put a halt to the pressure from Washington. He said he would draw upon the strength of the U.S.-U.K. relationship for a “calm discussion” on how to strengthen the NATO presence.
Asked if he thought Trump was genuinely considering military action with respect to Greenland, Starmer said, “I don’t, actually. I think that this can be resolved and should be resolved through calm discussion.”
Trump angered by Nobel decision
The second Trump administration’s aggressive statements have caused confusion and consternation, as a 1951 agreement between the U.S. and Denmark gives Washington the right to move around freely and construct military bases in Greenland, as long as Denmark and Greenland are notified.
Rasmussen reiterated Denmark’s interest in discussing those kind of issues as “pragmatic, cold-blooded Scandinavian people.”
Among the eight countries facing a new threat of tariffs is Norway. Trump told that country’s prime minister he no longer feels obligated “to think purely of Peace” because he had not been awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, as he repeated his demand for control of Greenland, in a letter seen by Reuters.
“Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America,” Trump wrote in the letter.
As Prime Minister Mark Carney strikes deals to make Canada less reliant on the U.S. for trade, he also joined European leaders in speaking out against President Donald Trump’s desire to take over Greenland. However, Carney also agreed to join Trump’s ‘board of peace’ to help rebuild Gaza.
The letter came in response to a brief message to Trump from Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere and Finnish President Alexander Stubb opposing his decision to impose tariffs. Stoere said he had repeatedly told Trump that the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the peace prize, is independent and that Norway’s government has no control over it.
While Trump’s assertion that he stopped several world wars last year is contentious, it is also true that the deadline for nominees for the most recent peace prize was Jan. 31, 2025, less than two weeks into Trump’s second term as president.
In his letter, Trump again questioned Danish sovereignty over Greenland, saying, “Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway?
“There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also.”
“The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland,” Trump added.
Norway’s Stoere amended his schedule, announcing he would attend the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday and Thursday, overlapping with Trump’s planned appearance in Switzerland.
Separately, European Union leaders will convene in Brussels on Thursday for an emergency summit.
There is at least one dissenter to the prospect of a joint EU statement on the matter. Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Monday the Greenland dispute is not an EU issue but rather a “bilateral issue that can be resolved via talks between the two parties.”
‘Europeans project weakness’: U.S. Treasury Secretary
Greenland is strategically important because as climate change causes the ice to melt, it opens up the possibility of shorter trade routes to Asia. That also could make it easier to extract and transport untapped deposits of critical minerals.
When asked on Monday to comment on Trump’s remarks about the alleged Russian threat, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said there has been a lot of “disturbing information” lately but that the government would not comment on the alleged Russian designs on Greenland.
Its importance for security, which Trump has asserted, has been debated.
Russia’s foreign ministry last week said that it was unacceptable for the West to keep claiming that Russia and China were a threat to Greenland.
In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said the Chinese government was urging the U.S. to “stop using the so-called threat from China as a pretext to pursue its own selfish interests.
White House officials have added fuel to the fire by not rejecting the possibility of military action, and by supporting Trump’s stance in the face of continued resistance in Europe.
“Europeans project weakness. U.S. projects strength,” Bessent said on Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. The following day, Bessent told reporters it would be “unwise” for European countries to retaliate with their own tariffs.
In Washington, several members of Trump’s Republican Party have expressed concerns with the White House’s aggressive posture on Greenland, but the options to put a check on the president are limited.
Sen. Mitch McConnell warned last week that an attempt to seize Greenland would “shatter the trust of allies” and be a disastrous foreign policy decision that would tarnish Trump’s legacy.
‘Commercial blackmail’
The other countries subject to the Trump tariff threats are Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.
While the Trump administration has made common cause with the right-wing nationalist parties of Europe, those of Germany and France have criticized the U.S. president over the Greenland issue.
Jordan Bardella, president of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party in France, posted on social media that the EU should suspend last year’s tariff deal with the U.S., describing Trump’s threats as “commercial blackmail.”
Front Burner28:25What if Greenland’s next?
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