US President Donald Trump on Friday suggested that he might punish countries with tariffs if they do not back US control of Greenland, a message that came as a bipartisan US Congress delegation sought to lower tensions in the Danish capital.
Trump for months has insisted that the US should control Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark, and said earlier this week that anything less than the Arctic island being in US hands would be “unacceptable.”
During an unrelated event at the White House about rural health care on Friday, he recounted how he had threatened European allies with tariffs on pharmaceuticals.
Photo: Ritzau Scanpix via AP
“I may do that for Greenland too,” Trump said. “I may put a tariff on countries if they don’t go along with Greenland, because we need Greenland for national security. So I may do that.”
He had not previously mentioned using tariffs to try to force the issue.
Earlier this week, the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland met in Washington with US Vice President J.D. Vance and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
That encounter did not resolve the deep differences, but did produce an agreement to set up a working group — on whose purpose Denmark and the White House then offered sharply diverging views.
European leaders have insisted that it is only for Denmark and Greenland to decide on matters concerning the territory, and Denmark said that it was increasing its military presence in Greenland in cooperation with allies.
In Copenhagen, a group of US senators and members of the US House of Representatives met with Danish and Greenlandic lawmakers, and with leaders including Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen.
Delegation leader US Senator Chris Coons thanked the group’s hosts for “225 years of being a good and trusted ally and partner,” and said that “we had a strong and robust dialogue about how we extend that into the future.”
US Senator Lisa Murkowski said after meeting lawmakers that the visit reflected a strong relationship over decades and “it is one that we need to nurture.”
She told reporters that “Greenland needs to be viewed as our ally, not as an asset, and I think that’s what you’re hearing with this delegation.”
The tone contrasted with that emanating from the White House. Trump has sought to justify his calls for a US takeover by repeatedly claiming that China and Russia have their own designs on Greenland. The White House has not ruled out taking the territory by force.
“We have heard so many lies, to be honest and so much exaggeration on the threats towards Greenland,” said Aaja Chemnitz, a Greenlandic member of the Danish parliament who took part in Friday’s meetings. “And mostly, I would say the threats that we’re seeing right now is from the US side.”
Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen on Tuesday said that “if we have to choose between the United States and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark. We choose NATO. We choose the Kingdom of Denmark. We choose the EU.”
The chair of the Nuuk, Greenland-based Inuit Circumpolar Council, which represents about 180,000 Inuit from Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Russia’s Chukotka region on international issues, said persistent statements from the White House that the US must own Greenland offer “a clear picture of how the US administration views the people of Greenland, how the US administration views Indigenous peoples, and peoples that are few in numbers.”
Sara Olsvig told reporters in Nuuk that the issue is “how one of the biggest powers in the world views other peoples that are less powerful than them. And that really is concerning.”
Indigenous Inuit in Greenland do not want to be colonized again, she said.
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