Donald Trump has stepped up his demand to annex Greenland but said the US would not use force to seize it during a rambling, invective-laden speech at Davos where he once again lashed out at Europe’s political leaders.
The address to thousands of business and political leaders at the World Economic Form in the Swiss ski resort indicated that while the US president was renouncing the use of military force – for now at least – to wrest control of Greenland, he still intended to wield America’s economic and diplomatic power to bend European allies to his will.
He said he was “seeking immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States”.
“I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force. All the US is asking for is a place called Greenland,” he said. “You can say yes, and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no and we will remember.”
The remarks elicited a cool reaction from the foreign minister of Denmark, the Nato country of which Greenland is a semi-autonomous territory. Lars Løkke Rasmussen said it was “positive” that Trump had ruled out an invasion but the US president’s ambitions for the territory were “intact”.
“It is, in isolation, positive that it is being said that military force will not be used, but that does not make the problem go away,” Rasmussen said. “The challenge is still there.”
Norway’s finance minister and former Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, told CNN that Trump had delivered an “important message… because up to now many were afraid that he actually was going to threaten to use force to acquire Greenland.”
Later on Wednesday, Trump announced a U-turn on his plans to impose sanctions on eight European countries over Greenland due to progress in talks with the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte. He said that in a bilateral meeting, he and Rutte had developed the “framework of a future deal” on Greenland and “the entire Arctic region” that “if consummated, will be a great [solution] for the United States”.
As a result, Trump wrote, he would not be imposing tariffs scheduled to go into effect on 1 Februrary. The US was set to impose 10% tariffs against Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland.
Trump did not give further details of the agreement, although he said talks were ongoing concerning a US missile defence shield that would be in part based in Greenland. “Further information will be made available as discussions progress,” he said.
During his earlier speech, Trump at times sought to needle his global audience, saying it was “stupid” for the US to cede Greenland to Denmark after the second world war, and that “without us, now you’d all be speaking German, or a little Japanese perhaps”. Davos is in the German-speaking part of Switzerland.
He said Denmark had been overrun by Germany “after just six hours of fighting”, prompting the US to intervene “at great cost and expense”. He insisted only the US was now fit to defend “this enormous, unsecured island”.
Greenland’s position between the United States, Russia, and China would make it a critical base for a proposed US missile defence shield called Golden Dome, Trump said, and the US had to take “ownership” of a fellow Nato member’s territory in order to provide for its defence.
“You need the ownership to defend it,” he said. “You can’t defend it on a lease. Who the hell wants to defend a licence agreement, or a lease?”
At several points, Trump appeared to confuse Greenland with Iceland, claiming “Iceland” had caused a drop in stock prices on Tuesday – when markets fell as a result of his threat to impose new tariffs on eight European countries.
Handing over Greenland to the US would not represent a threat to Nato, he said, praising its “excellent secretary general” and greeting Mark Rutte in the audience.
But Trump repeatedly returned to his argument that the US has had a raw deal from Nato, funding the protection of other European countries. “We give so much, and we get so little in return.”
He suggested that while the US was ready to defend Nato allies, this backing might not be returned. “We’re there for Nato 100%. I’m not sure if they’d be there for us.” Mutual defence is a founding principle of the transatlantic alliance.
Some European officials were less restrained in their responses to Trump’s speech. The European Green party co-chair Vula Tsetsi urged European leaders to “stand united against Trump’s bullying” over Greenland. Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, had delivered a stirring speech before Trump’s on Wednesday in which he urged smaller countries to present a united front and said that “compliance [with the United States] will not buy safety”.
Trump’s remarks on Greenland have unsettled members of his own party. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told CNN at Davos that she welcomed Trump’s pledge not to use force but added it was “unfortunate that it needed to be said”.
“He’s referring to it as a piece of real estate,” Murkowski said, adding that Trump had ignored the wishes of native Greenlanders. “But it is a place where, again, you have native people who live there. You have communities.”
California governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat and strong critic of the administration who is in Davos, emerged from the speech to describe it as, “one of the most insignificant hours I’ve spent in years – and I think the world spent”, describing it as, “fire and fury amounting to quite literally absolutely nothing”.
In the 80-minute speech, the president also claimed to have delivered a historic economic upturn at home, and rejected the idea of what he called the “new green scam”, of switching from fossil fuels to clean energy.
“I want Europe to do great, I want UK to do great; they’re sitting on one of the greatest energy sources in the world and they don’t use it,” he said. “There are windmills all over Europe, there are windmills all over the place, and they are losers.”
He reeled off a list of what he said were US economic achievements over the first 12 months of his second term. These included what he called “virtually no inflation”, falling petrol prices, and rapid economic growth.
He deployed openly nationalist rhetoric, boasting about his “100%” German and Scottish heritage, accusing Europe of destroying itself through “socially disruptive migration”, and saying that the “west cannot mass import foreign cultures, which have failed to ever build a successful society of their own”.
The president claimed that under his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, “we were a dead country. Now we are the hottest country anywhere in the world.”
He also gave details about secret US military capabilities used during the recent capture of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro during a raid on his fortified compound.
“Two weeks ago, they saw weapons that nobody ever heard of. They weren’t able to fire one shot at us,” Trump said. “Everything was discombobulated. They said, we’ve got them in our sights. Press the trigger. And nothing happened … Those defensive systems were made by Russia and by China.”
After his speech, Trump was due to hold a series of high-level meetings, including with the leaders of Poland, Switzerland and Egypt, and Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte. He is expected to meet Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday.
Trump arrived late in Switzerland on Wednesday, after an electrical fault on Air Force One forced him to switch planes, but cleared his diary to address the high-powered gathering on time.
The president’s threat at the weekend to slap punitive tariffs on eight European countries blamed for blocking his claim to Greenland has dominated discussions in Davos this week.
Carney used his Davos speech on Tuesday to warn mid-sized countries to unite in the face of US “coercion”. “Middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” he said.
Trump took direct aim at Carney in his speech, claiming Canada had been given “a lot of freebies” from the US. “Canada lives because of the US: remember that, Mark, next time you make your statements.”
Carney was just one of a string of targets in the speech, which lasted well over an hour. These included Switzerland, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the outgoing Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, and the Somali-born congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
By contrast, Trump said he had a “very good relationship with [Russia’s] President [Vladimir] Putin and President Xi [Jinping of China].”
