Has Europe had enough?
After more than a year of cautious diplomacy, high-stakes flattery and efforts to keep trans-Atlantic cooperation intact, European leaders now find themselves confronting perhaps the sharpest challenge yet from the White House.
President Donald Trump said Saturday he will impose sweeping new tariffs on eight key European allies that will ratchet up unless Denmark agrees to hand over Greenland, resurrecting one of his most provocative foreign policy obsessions as he threatens the territory of a NATO ally.
The ultimatum marks the latest escalation in a pattern that has seen Europe repeatedly forced onto the back foot during Trump’s second administration, weighing economic and security ties with the U.S. against a White House increasingly willing to weaponize trade against its closest partners.
But this time the response has been sharper.
European leaders moved quickly to convene an emergency meeting on Sunday, condemning the tariff threats as unacceptable and warning of serious consequences for trans-Atlantic relations.
The episode has raised fresh questions about how much longer Europe is willing to absorb pressure from Washington in the name of a NATO alliance that appears to be bursting at the seams.
Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland are facing new 10% tariffs until “a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland,” the U.S. leader said Saturday, with duties increasing to 25% if a deal is not reached by June 1.
It is a familiar position for European leaders, who spent much of last spring negotiating with Washington as Trump sought to reshape global trade through tariffs. The U.S. already has a framework agreement with the European Union capping tariffs at 15%, alongside a separate deal with the U.K. limiting duties to 10%.
Trump did not say whether the newly threatened tariffs would override those agreements or be imposed on top of them.
But the latest threats have drawn signs of fatigue and impatience with the U.S., as European leaders, long reluctant to confront Trump directly, appear newly united in defending Denmark’s territory and pushing back against what they see as an unacceptable escalation.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has often acted as an intermediary between Washington and Europe in the effort to bring an end to the war in Ukraine, while the U.K. was the first nation to strike a deal to reverse or cut some of Trump’s earlier tariffs.
But Starmer said Saturday that Trump’s plans to impose tariffs on European allies were “completely wrong,” a rare departure from what had appeared to be a policy of U.S. appeasement that has drawn criticism from lawmakers in his own country.
“Applying tariffs on allies for pursuing the collective security of NATO allies is completely wrong,” he said. “We will of course be pursuing this directly with the U.S. administration.”
French President Emmanuel Macron, who has recently issued dire warnings about the collapse of U.S.-Europe relations, said “no amount of intimidation” will persuade European nations to change their course on Greenland. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson warned the E.U. would not be “blackmailed” by Trump, while Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said “threats have no place among allies.”
In a joint statement, the eight nations threatened with tariffs said Sunday that “tariff threats undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral.”
“We will continue to stand united and coordinated in our response,” the statement said, ahead of an emergency E.U. meeting.
Trump has stood firm in his belief that the U.S. requires Greenland for its national security, and has repeated assertions that Russia and China will try to seize Greenland otherwise.
“There is not a thing that Denmark can do about it,” Trump wrote, referring to Danish defense capabilities as “two dogsleds as protection.”
European allies, for their part, argue that any security threats to Greenland should be handled together. Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen will visit Norway, the U.K. and Sweden over the next five days, the ministry said Sunday, noting that the main topic will be the security situation in the Arctic.
“What our countries have in common is that we all agree that NATO’s role in the Arctic must be strengthened, and I look forward to discussing how,” a statement said.
The president’s latest threat has called into question the European strategy of “buttering up Mr. Trump,” Michael Bociurkiw, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, told NBC News on Sunday, noting Trump’s latest threats had escalated the situation from “slingshot to bazooka.”
Even if European nations were able to come to some kind of agreement with Trump, he told NBC News, “he’s well known for changing his mind or unleveling the playing field, and this is what they have to understand.”
Bociurkiw said Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who announced lower tariffs with China last week after meeting with its leader Xi Jinping, had done the “smart thing” by going to Beijing and “risking the ire of Mr. Trump.”
“It shows that he’s acting unilaterally,” he added. “I think that’s the way Europe needs to go.”
While Europe has trodden carefully with Trump in part to avoid upsetting negotiations over the war in Ukraine, his ultimatum over Greenland “makes no difference at all” to that calculation, one analyst told NBC News, because “nobody had any faith in the United States” to deliver.
“The confirmation that the U.S. does not have a common security vision with Europe doesn’t change the position of Ukraine,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.
“The threats and promises that we hear from Europeans warning the U.S. that this could mean the end of NATO are ineffective because this is not something which the current U.S. leadership group values,” he added.
The defense of Ukraine, he said, “relies on Europe recognizing its responsibility, rather than any role the U.S. might previously have had.”
In a sign that the two disputes could end up entangled, however, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez warned Sunday that a U.S. invasion of Greenland “would make Vladimir Putin the happiest man in the world.”
