Name: European leaders condemn US President Trump’s tariff threats over Greenland | BBC News
Uploaded: 2026-01-18T16:54:35.000Z
Duration: 8 min 28 s
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There's been condemnation of President Donald Trump's announcement that he will hit the UK and other European countries with increased trade tariffs unless the US is allowed to buy Greenland, which is a semi autonomous Danish territory.

The president said a 10% levy would come into effect on 1 February.

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Zakir Starmer said threatening tariffs on NATO allies was completely wrong.

The EU is to hold an emergency meeting today.

Our North America correspondent, David Willis reports.

In Greenland, hundreds took to the streets in defiance of Donald Trump's desire to take control of the island.

An estimated 85% of Greenland's population rejects becoming part of the United States.

We are not interested in being Americans.

The President believes the island is crucial to America's national security interests and that only the US can protect Greenland against invasion by China or Russia.

Having talked of buying or seizing it, he's now turning his attention to those who stand opposed to America's annexation, namely its allies in Europe.

Trump has now threatened tariffs of up to 25% on imports from eight European countries, including the UK, until such time as a deal is reached for the complete and total purchase of Greenland.

Without such a deal, the President and his allies insist the security of the US and the world is at stake with respect to Denmark.

Denmark is a tiny country with a tiny economy and a tiny military.

They cannot control the territory of Greenland.

In response, the leaders of the European Council and the European Commission said the proposed tariffs would undermine relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral.

In a joint statement, Antonio Costa and Ursula von der Leyen stressed territorial integrity and sovereignty are fundamental principles of international law.

And in an interview recorded before the tariff announcement, the speaker of the House of Representatives, a close ally of the President, said he thought Mr.

Trump had ruled out using force to obtain Greenland.

I don't foresee military intervention in Greenland.

It's a small population of people and I think diplomatic channels is the way to go.

Soldiers from other European nations have been arriving in Greenland over the last few days for a Danish led Arctic endurance exercise designed to demonstrate the continent's commitment to the island's defence, something the President referred to as a very dangerous game.

Our political correspondent, Harry Farley explains how Sikhir Starmer will be trying to pursue this issue directly with President Trump.

I think we can expect people in Downing street to be trying to schedule a call between Sikir Starmer and Donald Trump as soon as possible.

Although of course, the last time Keir Starmer wanted a call with Donald Trump in the wake of those US strikes, On Venezuela, it took nearly a week for that to happen, happen.

So no guarantee of when that call will happen.

The prime Minister has been pursuing a strategy of trying to get as close to the president as possible to flatter him, to avoid criticizing him wherever possible until this issue with Greenland.

And people in government feel that a line has been crossed with those threats to a NATO ally.

So we had quite a punchy statement from Downing street last night saying that applying tariffs on allies for pursuing the collective strategy of, of NATO allies is completely wrong, the prime Minister said.

And it's worth saying, as far as reaction here in the UK goes, the prime Minister is not alone.

Opposition parties also similarly strong in their opposition.

As for European allies more broadly, as you'd expect, I suppose, EU ambassadors will be summoned to an emergency meeting in Brussels this afternoon to discuss this.

And it's also worth noting some in Donald Trump's own party have been critical of the this.

senate NATO observer group, including the Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who is an outspoken Trump critic, have said that this, these tariffs would be bad for America, bad for American business and bad for America's allies.

Sam Lowe is head of International Trade Practice at Flint Global and joins us now.

What are the questions you're asking yourself?

So one of the first questions is around when they may enter into force.

So the first tranche would be at the beginning of February, which does of course, leave a window ahead of that for negotiation.

So it is still possible that these tariffs are not introduced either because they're suspended or deferred for a period of time.

But of course, this isn't necessarily helpful for businesses planning their exports to the US because they now no longer know exactly what those tariffs rates will be from February onwards.

There's then also questions about the threat itself.

The president didn't threaten the entire eu, for example, he threatened individual member states, which would suggest member state specific tariffs, which of course then feeds through to questions about how the EU will collectively respond.

What impact might these tariffs have if they do come into effect?

And we must of course remember that sort of acronym, taco.

So I always think Trump sometimes chickens out, but

often does follow through on his tariff threats as well.

So trying to work out which way he's going to go on, this is going to be a core part of the conversation over the coming weeks.

But if we think about specific impacts, we of course have the UK US Trade agreement that was agreed last year and this means that, for example, steel going into the US is tariffs at 25% rather than the 50% on everyone else.

It means 100,000 vehicles receive a tariff of 10% rather than than 27 and a half percent.

And it calls into question all of these arrangements on the EU side, which is currently going through the process of ratifying its own agreement with the us.

I now suspect that's not going to happen.

So even if these threats don't go ahead, of course means that we now have to question the legitimacy of these deals and the sustainability of these deals because it's become increasingly clear that the President will renege on them if something important to him rises up the agenda.

Because as you note, it's not the whole of the EU he's talking about.

So this is one of those areas where if you talk to people who don't work on trade, they find it very surprising that the US could target individual member states rather than the EU as a whole.

But there's actually quite a lot of precedent for this in the context of threats around digital services taxes.

Individual member states have been named in the past when it comes to tariffing olives.

For example, the US applied anti dumping tariffs to Spanish olives.

So it is possible to target individual member states.

It is of course not easy to enforce, so we'll need to see how exactly that plays out.

It's still possible that the tariffs end up being EU wide, but

we can't rule out member state specific tariffs because they've happened before.

What will happen to the US EU Trade Agreement with the threat of tariffs looming overhead?

Well, I suspect it's not going to be implemented on the EU side.

We should note that the EU was already slow walking the introduction of its own commitments, by which I mean tariff reductions on US exports to the eu.

And we've since overnight had prominent members of the European Parliament come out publicly saying they're not going to sign off these tariff reductions whilst this threat is lingering.

And we've also seen the US Trade Representative Germaine Greer say, well, actually

you shouldn't link the implementation of the trade deal to what's going on in Greenland.

They're different things, but that's just not going to be possible.

So the EU US Trade Agreement was already precarious.

There are lots of reasons it could fall away.

I think that probability has now increased substantially.

Sam Lowe from Flint Global, thank you very much for joining us.