U.S. President Donald Trump launched a blistering broadside in a lengthy post on social media, announcing that exports from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland will be subject to a 10% tariff starting February 1, rising to 25% in June, and remaining in place until the “complete acquisition of Greenland” is finalized. This move escalates the trade war into a full-fledged geo-economic strangulation campaign. I firmly believe this is Trump’s most ruthless maneuver to date: he has precisely converted Europe’s long-standing moral debt, decades of free-riding under the U.S. security umbrella, into a flexible and lethal taxation lever.
The economic killing power of tariffs, as I see it
I have run the numbers. If the 25% tariff materializes as scheduled, these countries’ exports to the U.S. will face severe margin compression. Germany’s auto industry, where average gross margins already hover around 15%, would see its competitive advantage effectively wiped out. French aerospace and luxury goods, characterized by highly elastic demand, would be hit first and hardest. By 2026, Europe’s trade surplus with the United States is likely to evaporate by €20-30 billion, equivalent to a 0.2-0.3 percentage point drag on GDP.
What pains me most is the structural weakness Europe exposes at this moment: more than 20% of its exports depend on the U.S. market, yet it lacks sufficient domestic demand or an effective pivot toward Asia to absorb the shock. Such an inelastic supply curve is destined to lose in a tariff war.
Denmark’s tradition of selling land: an economic lesson
Every time I revisit Danish history, I cannot help but sneer. In 1845, Denmark sold Danish India to Britain for 1.125 million rigsdalers; in 1850, it transferred the Gold Coast in present-day Ghana for £10,000; in 1868, it offloaded the Nicobar Islands; and in 1917, it exchanged the Danish West Indies for $25 million in gold from the United States. This was never about defending sovereignty, it was rational liquidation under fiscal distress. Within the colonial framework of the era, colonies were tradable assets, monetized to relieve short-term debt pressure and inject capital.
I assert that Trump is now deploying this historical logic as a psychological warfare strategy. Denmark’s fiscal deficit already exceeds 3% of GDP, and if Greenland could be monetized for tens of billions of dollars, it would be a transaction with a positive net present value from a purely economic perspective. The moral packaging is nothing more than European self-deception.
Geography and the investment efficiency of the “Golden Dome”
New York lies roughly 3,200 kilometers from Greenland, while Copenhagen is more than 4,000 kilometers away. This distance differential allows the United States to reduce costs for Arctic radar chains and missile defense by over 30%. With the “Golden Dome” program consuming hundreds of billions of dollars, the absence of a Greenland anchor would amount to a massive misallocation of capital, cutting the project’s net present value in half.
To me, this is a textbook case of strategic asset pricing. Europe lacks the capacity to build a comparable system on its own and can only watch as Trump uses tariffs to force a so-called “fair burden-sharing.”
European theatrics and reluctant compromise
I see through Macron’s decision to deploy troops to Greenland as little more than domestic political theater, eerily reminiscent of Chinese-style leadership image engineering—an attempt to rescue a 13% approval rating while failing to conceal the EU’s military fragmentation and fiscal constraints. Retaliatory tariffs would at best amount to symbolic strikes on auto parts; the real negotiating space is close to zero.
I predict that under mounting economic pain, Europe will ultimately relent, allowing expanded U.S. military basing rights in exchange for tariff relief. This standoff highlights Trump’s transactional realism, which far outclasses Europe’s illusions of values-based politics.
Europe’s foolish drift toward the Chinese authoritarian regime, guided by the naïve logic that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, betrays a profound failure to grasp democratic values and the dark logic of the Chinese Communist system. The fundamental issue is Europe’s vulnerability: unless it restructures its export model and achieves genuine defense autonomy, 2026 will mark a decisive turning point.
