The American president, Donald Trumpthreatened this Friday, in the context of a talk on health, to impose tariffs on countries that oppose the annexation of Greenland.
Without mentioning anyone in particular, it was clear that the message was directed at the European Union, which has shown its full support for Denmark on this issue.
Let us remember that the European Union and the United States reached a trade agreement this summer that has yet to be ratified by the European Parliament and that many understood that it tipped the balance too much in favor of Washington.
So far, the foreign country that has come out the best from the distribution of tariffs has been the only one that has stood up, that is, China.
Trump y Xi Jinping They spent the first half of 2025 raising and lowering tariffs until the American realized that it could not win that battle without taking a good part of the world economy and preferred to back down.
The European Union has never put it in that position, despite the fact that the trade agreements between the alliance and the United States move more money than any other association in the world, around one and a half billion euros in 2024.
Now, Brussels may be faced with the dilemma of standing up to Trump or trying, again, to reach an agreement with him, knowing that it will not be beneficial to its interests.
Anything to prevent the invasion of Greenland and the diplomatic catastrophe that would follow.
Left-wing groups have announced their willingness to postpone the approval of the tariff pact already negotiated, although much of it is already being applied. Those on the right choose to move forward.
Tense conversations
In any case, what seems to be on the table right now is the possibility of linking the future of Greenland to commercial relations between both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
In other words, whether what was agreed in the summer is approved or not, propose to Trump a new deal that is supposed to improve the business expectations of the United States in exchange for the renunciation of continuing to bother in the territory of the European Union.
That would be the carrot that the Old Continent would be willing to offer.
Others, however, bet on the suit. For example, the French Minister of Economy, Roland Lescureadmitted to Financial Times who last Monday had a tense conversation with his American counterpart, Scott Bessantin which he warned him that the forcible annexation of Greenland would mean “crossing a red line” that France was not willing to tolerate.
Lescure appealed to the 250-year friendship between both countries to stand firm and ensure that, if Trump went ahead with his operation, there could be economic retaliation.
In this case, the objective would not be so much to “appease” Trump, but rather the opposite: to make him realize that any measure of commercial or military aggression against the European Union will be responded to just as China responded at the time.
Lescure is confident that, sooner rather than later, the American president will realize that his eccentricities do not come for free and that they can cause great damage to his own economy. The same one that promised to revive in the 2024 electoral campaign.
Donald Trump, president of the United States, and Georgia Meloni, president of Italy, during a meeting in Washington in April 2025.
Contact / EP
Meloni places order
The United States must feel that it has an ally it can trust, but at the same time it must realize that that ally cannot be dominated. Otherwise, Europe is condemned to playing the ugly duckling in the relationship, always forced to flatter and give in.
In that sense, Giorgia Melonithe Italian prime minister, despite her obvious ideological affinity with Trump, is one of the most forceful when it comes to rejecting American impositions and appealing to the union of Europeans.
This Friday, Meloni insisted on the need for NATO to act in a coordinated manner in Greenland, to, on the one hand, demonstrate to Russia and China that the Arctic is not their playground… and, on the other hand, convince the White House that its partners can face any threat and that the United States does not need to occupy the island in the first place to defend it.
That, of course, is assuming that this is really the reason why Trump wants to annex Greenland, something that not everyone is so clear about.
Mineral resources, however difficult to extract, and immediate access to trade routes, as well as the awareness of going down in history as the president who expanded the United States to the northeast, seem to weigh as much as strict national security reasons.
In any case, what Meloni asked was that, instead of each country separately announcing the sending of troops to Greenland for supposed maneuvers, they act as a united group and under the same command.
At the moment, there are seven NATO countries that have sent soldiers to the Danish island, without exactly knowing why: the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Netherlands.
They thus join those already sent by Denmark at the time, to prevent Trump from continuing to repeat that the only defense that Greenland has are two sleighs pulled by reindeer.