Trump tees up Davos with tariff power play to seize Greenland

WASHINGTON - Mr Donald Trump always puts himself at center stage when he travels abroad, but the US president made sure his foray to Davos this week will be particularly dramatic.

He set up his visit to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland by shaking the foundations of both the EU and the NATO alliance, again, and pledging a barrage of new tariffs related to his Greenland ambitions
that trample over deals he already struck with the European Union and the UK.

The US president has long grumbled about Europe, repeatedly casting the bloc, home to many of America’s closest allies, as freeloaders who abuse American largess and military might, all the while harassing US tech giants. 

European leaders had been taking Mr Trump’s outbursts more in stride during his second term, but the weekend threat - delivered by a Truth Social post fired off from his West Palm Beach golf club - threatens to reignite tensions and push Europeans to retaliatory measures they had until now avoided.

EU leaders called an emergency summit for later this week, while Mr Trump’s aides doubled down over the weekend.

“I believe that the Europeans will understand that the best outcome is for the US to maintain or receive control of Greenland,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who will join Mr Trump in Davos, told NBC’s Meet the Press.

He said direct US control of a territory that the US is already obligated to defend will boost deterrence. “We are the strongest country in the world. Europeans project weakness; US projects strength.”

Now, rather than visit Brussels or Copenhagen, Mr Trump heads to the Alps for one of the flagship gatherings of the global economic order - a visit that comes as he shifts US attention away from its long-term multilateral systems and alliances and towards alternate gatherings, including his Board of Peace that is beginning to take shape with a broader mandate that is drawing concern from other world leaders.

This will be Mr Trump’s third trip to Davos as president, and comes after he spoke virtually to the gathering in 2025 only a few days into his second term. 

In that address, he was quick to air his transatlantic complaints. “From the standpoint of America, the EU treats us very, very unfairly, very badly,” he said, during a speech that complained about taxes, tariffs and regulations. “I’m trying to be constructive, because I love Europe.”

Mr Trump at the time pledged a “revolution of common sense”. Since then, his administration has often been anything but common, and has applied tariffs widely, including to Europe, and swung back and forth on the strength of US support for Ukraine, a war Mr Trump has said he thought would be easier to end. 

This time around, Mr Trump is set to unveil details of his housing and affordability push, as he takes steps to shore up his support ahead of midterm elections in 2026.

Still, his latest Greenland bombast shatters a tenuous trade truce that had set in between Washington and European capitals, in the aftermath of deals with the EU and UK in 2025. 

Mr Trump’s threat on Ja 17 to apply 10 per cent tariffs to the UK and seven European nations in February as leverage for Greenland threatens to hike the rates the countries agreed to, and sent French President Emmanuel Macron moving to activate the EU’s biggest trade countermeasure. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer used a phone call on Jan 18 with Mr Trump to say that the tariff threat was “wrong”.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is ideologically close to Mr Trump, said she spoke with the president and tried to persuade him to deescalate the situation.

“We must resume dialogue, avoid an escalation, and that’s what I’m working on,” she told reporters in Seoul. Mr Trump, she added, was “interested in listening but, it appears to me, from a US point of view, the message from this side of the Atlantic hadn’t been clear”.

Mr Trump’s former vice-president also called on him to change tack.

“I do think the current posture, which I hope will change and abate, does threaten to fracture that strong relationship, not just with Denmark but with all of our NATO allies,” Mr Mike Pence said on CNN’s State of the Union on Jan 18, adding he nonetheless supports the goal of acquiring Greenland.

The tariffs may not take effect. The White House declined all weekend to say what legal authority they’d use. They may end up using one that the Supreme Court could be poised to curtail or quash. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said on Jan 18 he hadn’t been briefed on the legal grounds for the tariffs but cast it as a bargaining ploy.

“The president is the person who wrote The Art of the Deal because he’s so good at dealmaking. And so I think right now it’s really a good time for cooler heads to prevail and for us to disregard the rhetoric and get to the table and see if there can’t be a deal that’s worked out that’s best for everybody,” Mr Hassett told The Sunday Briefing on Fox News. BLOOMBERG