For more than 75 years, the fondest dream of Russian strategy has been to divide Western Europe from the U.S. and break the NATO alliance. That is now a possibility as President Trump presses his campaign to capture Greenland no matter what the locals or its Denmark owner thinks.
Mr. Trump on Saturday threatened to impose a 10% tariff starting Feb. 1 on a handful of European countries that have opposed his attempt to obtain U.S. sovereignty over Greenland. The tariff would jump to 25% on June 1. Presumably this tariff would come on top of the rates Mr. Trump already negotiated in trade deals last year (10% for Britain, 15% for the European Union).
The targets are Denmark (which owns Greenland), Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and the United Kingdom. All participated in a recent military exercise on the world’s largest island that was intended to reassure Washington that Europe wants to work with the U.S. to defend Greenland from Russia and China.
But Mr. Trump isn’t taking alliance cooperation for an answer. He wants the U.S. to own Greenland, its ice, minerals, strategic location and 56,000 residents. And he seems prepared to push around everyone else to get it.
There are good reasons for Washington to care about Greenland, including the island’s strategic position and untapped reserves of rare-earth minerals. Mr. Trump isn’t the first President to suggest buying it outright, but the U.S. already has a high degree of access to the island and Denmark is willing to negotiate more. Tariffs in the cause of bullying imperialism is the wrong way to make a deal, and they might stiffen opposition on the island and in Europe.
Mr. Trump is taking reckless risk with the NATO alliance that advances U.S. interests in the arctic. If he doesn’t believe us, he can look up Norway, Sweden and Finland in an atlas. The latter two joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization recently, and already are discovering that with Mr. Trump no good strategic deed goes unpunished.
The economics are nonsensical too. All of the countries on his tariff list except for the United Kingdom are members of the European Union with a common trade policy. This means any tariff he imposes on those countries will have to extend to the entire 27-member bloc. So much for the trade deals Mr. Trump negotiated to great fanfare last year with the EU and the U.K.
Members of the European Parliament, which still must approve the U.S.-EU agreement, are threatening to put that pact on ice. This bullying plays poorly with the European public, making it harder for politicians to give Mr. Trump what he wants on Greenland or anything else. The message to these countries is that no deal with Mr. Trump can be trusted because he’ll blow it up if he feels it serves his larger political purposes.
The Greenland Tariff War of 2026 imperils other U.S. priorities. The trade tax on Britain could upset an agreement Mr. Trump struck last year under which Britain will pay more for pharmaceuticals in exchange for Washington dropping tariffs on medication imports from the U.K. Speaking of which: Why Mr. Trump would want to head into midterm elections foisting higher prices on voters worried about affordability is a mystery.
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No one should underestimate the shock his Greenland project is producing among allies. Along with his tariffs and his tilt toward Russia against Ukraine, he is alienating Western Europe in a way that will be hard to repair. It’s true that Europe may not be in a position to resist if Mr. Trump really wants to go to war over the island. But say good-bye to NATO.
The sad irony is that China and Russia may be the biggest winners, though Mr. Trump justifies his Greenland necessity in the name of deterring both. Canada’s Prime Minister bent the knee to Xi Jinping this past week, and Britain’s PM is heading there this month. The EU and South American countries have struck a big free-trade pact.
The West is in the process of a diplomatic and economic hedging operation against Mr. Trump’s might-makes-right diplomacy. Whether or not Mr. Trump believes it, the U.S. needs friends in the world. He seems to think that if he captures Greenland, history will remember him as another Thomas Jefferson (Louisiana purchase) or William Seward (Alaska). The cost of his afflatus to U.S. interests will be greater than he imagines.
