U.S. President Donald Trump takes questions from the media during a press briefing at the White House on Tuesday.Win McNamee/Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump vowed the world will “find out” what he’s willing to do to annex Greenland as he departed for a World Economic Forum dominated by fears that his imperialist ambitions will destroy the NATO defence alliance.
In a string of overnight Truth Social posts on Tuesday, Mr. Trump said “there can be no going back” on his demand to take over the Arctic island – despite its inhabitants rejecting his overtures – and suggested he also wants to seize Canada and Venezuela.
The President is scheduled to speak in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, where other world leaders will try to dissuade him from acting on his threats against Greenland and imposing additional tariffs on European countries that oppose his plans.
“You’ll find out,” Mr. Trump said at a rambling White House news conference Tuesday afternoon, when asked how far he is willing to go to acquire Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory.
“I think something’s going to happen that’s going to be very good for everybody,” he said later, without elaborating. While the President boasted that he “did more for NATO than anybody else, alive or dead,” he did not commit to the defence pact that has underpinned the Western alliance’s collective security since 1949.
A military invasion of Greenland, which Mr. Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out, would constitute a once-unthinkable attack by one member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on another, and certainly spell the end of the pact at a time when China and Russia are giving rein to their own expansionism.
Mr. Trump threatened last week to impose additional 10-per-cent tariffs on France, Britain, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands starting Feb. 1 until the U.S. takes Greenland. The tariffs will rise to 25 per cent on June 1, he threatened.
In an earlier Truth Social post on Tuesday, the President said he and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte had agreed to a meeting on Greenland in Davos. “As I expressed to everyone, very plainly, Greenland is imperative for National and World Security. There can be no going back – On that, everyone agrees!”
Mr. Trump then posted an AI-generated image of himself in the Oval Office showing European leaders a map that includes Canada, Greenland and Venezuela as U.S. territory.
The President has insisted he wants to control Greenland to better defend the U.S. from Russian and Chinese encroachment in the Western Hemisphere. But the U.S. already has a military base on the island and a 1951 treaty with Denmark that allows Washington to send more troops and build more facilities there.
The emergency talks at Davos are likely to focus on European assurances that other NATO countries will step up Arctic security. Mr. Trump has repeatedly complained that the rest of NATO does not spend enough on defence, leaving the U.S. to shoulder a disproportionate burden.
Carney stands behind Greenland, criticizes Trump without naming him in blunt Davos speech
In Davos on Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada “strongly opposes” the use of tariffs to coerce Europe over Greenland, warned that the world is in the middle of a “rupture” of the rules-based international order, and called for countries to co-operate against coercion by the world’s major powers.
“Middle powers must act together, because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu,” he said.
French President Emmanuel Macron told the World Economic Forum “imperial ambitions” are resurfacing amid “a shift toward a world without rules, where international law is trampled underfoot and where the only law that seems to matter is that of the strongest.”
Mr. Trump has also threatened to impose a 200-per-cent tariff on French wines, including champagne, to coerce Mr. Macron into joining his planned “board of peace” for Gaza. Mr. Macron is reportedly reluctant to join out of fear that Mr. Trump is trying to replace the United Nations Security Council with a body under his personal control.
Early on Tuesday, Mr. Trump on Truth Social posted a screenshot of a text message from Mr. Macron, in which the French President wrote “I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland” and suggested an emergency G7 meeting and dinner in Paris on Thursday.
In another post, Mr. Trump accused Britain of “total weakness” and “GREAT STUPIDITY” for a deal to turn over sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, including an island housing a joint U.S.-British air base, to Mauritius as part of a decolonization process. The agreement, which the Trump administration supported last year, includes continued U.S. use of the military base.
At the news conference, Mr. Trump rejected Mr. Macron’s G7 meeting request.
“No, I wouldn’t do that. Because, you know, Emmanuel’s not going to be there very long, there’s no longevity there,” he said, referencing the end of Mr. Macron’s term next year.
Mr. Trump said he had not spoken with Mr. Macron or British Prime Minister Keir Starmer since his social-media missives.
“They get a little bit rough when I’m not around, but when I’m around, they treat me very nicely,” he said, before adding that both leaders have “got to straighten out their countries,” including by getting rid of electricity-generating windmills.
Asked if taking over the Panama Canal, which he threatened a year ago, was still on the table, Mr. Trump replied: “Sort of.”
The President held the news conference to mark the first anniversary of his return to office. Before fielding questions about Davos, an unusually subdued Mr. Trump spent an hour and 20 minutes slowly flipping through images of people arrested by immigration agents in Minneapolis and then reading a meandering list of his achievements from a stack of papers.
“I feel like God is very proud of the job I’ve done,” he said.