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<\/p>\nIn the year since Donald Trump was inaugurated, world leaders have streamed into the White House to kiss the ring.<\/p>\n
Some, including Australia’s Anthony Albanese, emerge from their meetings still smiling. Some do not.<\/p>\n
A stony-faced delegation from Denmark and Greenland went viral last week after their chat with the US president’s team seemed to go so badly it sparked an impromptu debrief \u2014 complete with cigarettes \u2014 in a nearby car park.<\/p>\n
But 12 months into Trump’s second term, something has become clear: even those who leave the Oval Office with a deal, beware. It might not be worth the paper it’s written on.<\/p>\n
And yes, that goes for Australia, too.<\/p>\n
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Donald Trump greets Anthony Albanese outside the White House last year. (Reuters: Kevin Lamarque)<\/p>\n
This hypothesis stacked up at the weekend, when Trump blindsided eight allies by announcing new tariffs on them.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, the president said France, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland and the United Kingdom would all face an additional 10 per cent levy on exports to the US from February 1 unless they supported his plan to buy Greenland.<\/p>\n
If a deal isn’t done by June, the tariffs would rise to 25 per cent, he said in a social media post.<\/p>\n
The president’s threats come despite the European Union (EU), which represents all the affected countries except the UK and Norway, having negotiated a trade agreement with the US in July last year.<\/p>\n
“It’s a good deal for everybody,” Trump said at the time. “It’s going to bring us closer together.”<\/p>\n
That sentiment lasted less than six months.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump’s text to Norway’s prime minister, annotated<\/a><\/p>\n A text message from the US president to Norway’s prime minister has fanned the flames of the geopolitical dumpster fire engulfing Greenland. We’ve analysed Donald Trump’s claims to see if they stack up.<\/p>\n The UK, which had still been thrashing out a new deal with the US, is scrambling to assess its new reality.<\/p>\n Britain, like Australia, had been under the impression its relationship with the Trump White House was rock solid.<\/p>\n The president, whose late mother was Scottish, last year even said the UK would be protected from future tariffs “because I like them”.<\/p>\n Downing Street had pulled out all the stops to ingratiate itself to Trump. On his first visit to the Oval Office, British PM Sir Keir Starmer brought a letter from King Charles III inviting Trump for an unprecedented second state visit.<\/p>\n Could efforts like this have counted for nothing?<\/p>\n California’s Governor Gavin Newsom, who’s considered a potential future US presidential candidate, thinks so, saying world leaders are being “played”.<\/p>\n “It’s embarrassing,” he told reporters after arriving in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday for the World Economic Forum.<\/p>\n Trump is expected to address that gathering on Wednesday.<\/p>\n Trump and the madman theory<\/p>\n