{"id":383175,"date":"2026-01-22T00:15:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T00:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/383175\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T00:15:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T00:15:14","slug":"trump-walks-back-greenland-tariffs-threat-citing-vague-deal-over-territory-greenland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/383175\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump walks back Greenland tariffs threat, citing vague \u2018deal\u2019 over territory | Greenland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump<\/a> has walked back his threat to impose sweeping US tariffs<\/a> on eight European countries, claiming he had agreed \u201cthe framework of a future deal\u201d on Greenland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Four days after vowing to introduce steep import duties<\/a> on a string of US allies over their support for Greenland\u2019s continued status as an autonomous Danish territory, the president backed down.<\/p>\n

The US will not hit Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland with tariffs of 10% from 1 February after all, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. Over the weekend, he had also threatened<\/a> to lift the tariffs to 25% from 1 June.<\/p>\n

The threat had prompted widespread apprehension; criticism from senior European politicians, who declared they \u201cwill not allow ourselves to be blackmailed\u201d; and warnings from economists.<\/p>\n

European Union leaders had threatened to deploy<\/a> the bloc\u2019s so-called anti-coercion instrument (ACI), otherwise known as the \u201ctrade bazooka\u201d, which would have allowed the EU to retaliate in defense of coercion measures through extraordinary trade sanctions.<\/p>\n

After what he called a \u201cvery productive\u201d meeting with the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, on Wednesday, Trump claimed he had formed \u201cthe framework\u201d of a deal over Greenland<\/a>, without providing more information.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased upon this understanding, I will not be imposing the Tariffs<\/a> that were scheduled to go into effect on February 1,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n

Trump did not give further details of the agreement, but said talks were continuing concerning a US missile defense shield that would be in part based in Greenland.<\/p>\n

The deal would be in force \u201cfor ever\u201d, he claimed at the Davos economic forum in Switzerland. \u201cWe have a concept of a deal. I think it\u2019s going to be a very good deal for the United States, also for them,\u201d Trump told CNBC, the financial news network. \u201cIt\u2019s a little bit complex, but we\u2019ll explain it down the line.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Nato spokesperson, Allison Hart, said: \u201cDiscussions among Nato allies on the framework the president referenced will focus on ensuring Arctic security through the collective efforts of allies, especially the seven Arctic allies.<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cNegotiations between Denmark, Greenland, and the United States will go forward aimed at ensuring that Russia and China never gain a foothold \u2013 economically or militarily \u2013 in Greenland.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Rutte, secretary general of the alliance, sounded a note of caution. \u201cI think it was a very good meeting tonight,\u201d he told the AFP news agency. \u201cBut there\u2019s still a lot of work to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Denmark\u2019s foreign minister said Trump had sent positive signals by saying he would not use military force to seize Greenland.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump said that he will pause the trade war. He says: \u2018I will not attack Greenland.\u2019 These are positive messages,\u201d Lars L\u00f8kke Rasmussen told Danish public television DR.<\/p>\n

Trump \u201calso had a good conversation with the Nato general secretary\u201d, he said, without giving details.<\/p>\n

At a Nato meeting on Wednesday, military officers from member states of the transatlantic alliance discussed a compromise through which the US would be granted sovereignty over small pockets of Greenland, the New York Times reported<\/a>, citing three unnamed senior officials. Two of the officials compared the proposal with the UK\u2019s military bases in Cyprus, which are regarded as British territory, it said.<\/p>\n

\u200bHours before climbing down on tariffs, during a rambling speech in Davos<\/a>, Trump said the US would not use force to seize Greenland, but stressed that he still planned to wield his nation\u2019s economic and diplomatic power to obtain it \u2013 and extolled the benefits of US tariffs.<\/p>\n

\"WhatWhat Donald Trump’s Davos speech tells us about his Greenland bid \u2013 video<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re all party to them \u2013 in some cases, victims to them,\u201d he told the assembled delegates from around the world. \u201cBut in the end, it\u2019s a fair thing, and most of you realize that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the US president has repeatedly backed down from his most extreme threats on tariffs \u2013 most notably last spring, when he hailed the start of a new era for the US economy, only to shelve a vast wave of tariffs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Concern over Trump\u2019s aggressive trade strategy is not just international, but domestic. His tariffs have repeatedly raised fears for the US economy<\/a>. Wall Street suffered its worst day since October on Tuesday, the first day it traded after Trump\u2019s threat to attack Nato allies with tariffs over Greenland.<\/p>\n

The US president pays close attention to stock-market movements, and mentioned them several times in his speech on Wednesday. He claimed credit for the fact they had hit a series of record highs since he returned to office, but acknowledged they dipped this week \u201cbecause of Iceland\u201d, apparently meaning his pursuit of Greenland.<\/p>\n

After he posted on Wednesday, global markets recovered. The benchmark S&P 500 closed up 1.2% in New York, as the Dow Jones industrial average \u2013 closing in on 50,000 for the first time \u2013 climbed 1.2% to finish at 49,077.23.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s recent obsession with Greenland, after the US toppled the regime of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro in Venezuela, has rattled global officials in recent weeks. Trump claims that Denmark owes Greenland to the US because it helped defend the territory during the second world war, which has been debunked<\/a>, and that the US needs the territory for national security purposes.<\/p>\n

In his speech<\/a> at Davos, Trump said the US would not use military force to take Greenland but demanded \u201cimmediate negotiations\u201d. \u201cWe want a piece of ice for world protection, and they won\u2019t give it,\u201d Trump said. \u201cWe\u2019ve never asked for anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

His climbdown on tariffs came hours after the European parliament suspended indefinitely the ratification of the US-EU tariff deal<\/a> sealed last summer, in a move that showed politicians were, for the first time, willing to face Trump down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has walked back his threat to impose sweeping US tariffs on eight European countries, claiming he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-383175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}