In early 2026, Trump returned to an idea he’d first mentioned around a year before: that the USA should annex Greenland. And he escalated his earlier rhetoric. What had seemed an idle fancy previously now seemed frighteningly real. The fact that he was threatening to go to war with an ally and fellow member of NATO didn’t seem to register with Trump: he was simply convinced that Greenland should be his. (I mean, should be America’s, of course.) And while no one doubted the ability of the USA to do it – Greenland has a small population and a tiny military – it still seemed unbelievable that even Trump would want to do something so monumentally stupid.
On January 17, Trump apparently decided to remove all doubts: taking to Truth Social, Trump threatened to impose a 10% tariff on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland beginning at the start of February, and increasing to 25% at the start of June. “This Tariff,” he wrote, “will be due and payable until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland”. European leaders were united in their rejection of this threat, and responded with the threat of economic countermeasures of their own. In Denmark, Greenland, the United States and numerous other countries, protestors took to the streets to show their opposition to Trump’s plans.
