Takeaways by Bloomberg AI
- President Donald Trump said he would refrain from imposing tariffs on goods from European nations opposing his effort to take possession of Greenland, citing a “framework of a future deal” he said was reached regarding the island.
- Trump announced the decision after a meeting with North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Mark Rutte at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, but did not detail the parameters of the so-called “framework”.
- Trump told reporters he would release the specifics of the agreement shortly, saying “it’s a long-term deal” that would last for an “infinite” period of time and puts everybody in a real good position.
(“Framework” includes mineral rights. Hint: Rare Earth minerals)
The damage has been done:
After two weeks of escalating threats toward Europe, President Donald Trump blinked on Wednesday, backing away from the unthinkable brink of a potential war against a NATO ally during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Trump’s
vow not to use military force to seize Greenland from Denmark eased European fears about a worst-case scenario and prompted a rebound on Wall Street. And
his declaration hours later after meeting with NATO’s leader that he may back off of his tariff threat having secured the “framework” of an agreement over Greenland continued a day of backpedaling on one of the most daring gambits of his presidency to date.
But his continued heckling of allies as “ungrateful” for not simply giving the U.S. “ownership and title” of what he said was just “a piece of ice” did little to reverse a deepening sentiment among NATO leaders and other longtime allies that they can no longer consider the United States — for 80 years the linchpin of the transatlantic alliance — a reliable ally.
“The takeaway for Europe is that standing up to him can work. There is relief, of course, that he’s taking military force off the table, but there is also an awareness that he could reverse himself,” said a European official who attended Trump’s speech and, like others interviewed for this report, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Trump’s promises and statements are unreliable but his scorn for Europe is consistent. We will have to continue to show resolve and more independence because we can no longer cling to this illusion that America is still what we thought it was.”
The threat of force appeared to have the strong backing of deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who offered the most forceful articulation of those desires in an interview this month where he claimed that America was the rightful owner of Greenland and insisted the “real world” was one “that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister and secretary general of NATO, wrote this week that it’s time for Europe to shift its posture toward the U.S. from one of close allies to a more self-protective stance defined by a stronger military and reciprocal tariffs.
“Mr. Trump, like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, believes in power and power only,” he
wrote, likening the U.S. president to the leaders of Russia and China. “Europe must be prepared to play by those same rules.”
Trump’s threats against Denmark have obliterated the long-held view about the U.S., that after 80 years of standing up to imperialist conquerors from Adolf Hitler’s Germany to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Washington would always be the tip of the spear when it came to enforcing a world order founded on shared democratic ideals.
Suddenly, that spear is being turned against its longtime allies.
“The jewel in the crown of our power and of our role in the world has always been our alliance system,” said Jeremy Shapiro, a veteran of the State Department under the President Barack Obama administration who is now a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.
Shapiro noted that the U.S. has at times still employed hard power since the end of World War II, especially in its own hemisphere. But overall, American foreign policy has largely been defined by its reliance on soft power, which he said “ is much less expensive, it is much less coercive, it is much more moral and ethical, and it’s more durable.”
Returning to the law of the jungle and a world where larger powers gobble up smaller ones, Shapiro continued, will make the U.S. more like Russia and China — the two countries he claims threaten U.S. interests in Greenland — and weaker over the long term.
“Moving from our trusted methods to Putin’s methods is worse than a crime,” he said. “It’s an idiocy.”
