Trump's Europe Strategy: Leaders Divided and Scrambling Over His Demands

Donald Trump has Europe’s leaders exactly where he wants them: scrambling and divided over how to react to his vow to seize Greenland and impose tariffs on anyone who resists. The US president threw more chaos into the mix on Tuesday morning with a string of Truth Social posts lambasting his so-called allies and AI images depicting the Danish territory as belonging to the United States. It is a classic example of his mastery of “flooding the field” and “escalation dominance”, the use of superior power to ratchet up conflicts at will. Mr Trump will attend the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, where he is expected to hold talks on Greenland with his reeling European counterparts. Maga conspiracy theorists believe that Davos is the capital of hated globalists intent on forming a world government. At the moment, however, its prime ministers and presidents look less like a controlling cartel than a routed mob desperately looking for answers. The EU’s 27 members were already struggling to agree on how to respond to Mr Trump’s surprise threat of tariffs if Denmark does not sell Greenland to the US. Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, insisted that Europe cannot allow itself to be blackmailed. France’s Emmanuel Macron said he wanted the toughest response possible, including the use of the bloc’s “trade bazooka”, which would shut US firms out of the single market. Germany walked back on some tough talk to urge caution and unity, while Italy’s Giorgia Meloni remained desperate to avoid risking a trade war. Ireland, the most exposed EU country to a tariff war with Germany, looked on nervously, wondering how to balance its two most important alliances. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, urged engagement over escalation. That strategy of appeasement failed last year, when Mr Trump hit the bloc with a 15 per cent blanket tariff on EU imports. Emergency summit called The EU is facing the most unprecedented threat to transatlantic relations since the Second World War. It must be as united as possible. It has called an emergency leaders’ summit on Thursday, a day after the expected talks in Davos. Mr Trump, unburdened by the need to find consensus between 27 countries, is moving too fast for the bloc, which is how he likes it. In Davos, Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, laughed off the idea that Brussels would deploy its trade bazooka. “I imagine they will form the dreaded European working group first, which seems to be their most forceful weapon,” he said. Mr Trump hates the EU, but the last few days make one wonder if he hates Mrs von der Leyen personally. On Saturday, the commission chief was signing a trade deal with South American countries after an astonishing 25 years of negotiations. She had faced down Mr Macron to get the deal done, arguing that it was a counterweight to an unreliable Mr Trump. Brussels was embarrassed by the failure of its negotiations with Mr Trump to alleviate tariffs last year, but this was meant to wipe that stain away. Instead, her crowning moment was upstaged by Mr Trump and her credibility is now at stake. She is not the only one walking a diplomatic high-wire. Friedrich Merz knows that US tariffs will hurt Germany’s export-led, stuttering economy. Meloni no longer the ‘Trump whisperer’ Ms Meloni has brought stability to Italy but has struggled to raise stubbornly low economic growth. Once hailed as the EU’s “Trump whisperer”, she now risks being seen as his enabler after warning against an economically damaging trade war. Mr Macron is a lame duck domestically. Ms Frederiksen’s popularity is waning and her party lost control of Copenhagen for the first time in a century in November. All of Europe is hobbled by its dependence on US military force to protect it from Russia, but perhaps none of Europe’s leaders are as vulnerable to Mr Trump’s whims as Sir Keir Starmer. The Prime Minister wants to have his cake and eat it, insisting Britain does not have to choose between the US and Europe. Last year, Sir Keir was able to negotiate a lower US tariff regime than the EU’s, thanks to his then-chummy relationship with the president. Mr Trump demands loyalty, but Sir Keir has nailed his colours firmly to Europe’s mast and told the president that he is “wrong” on Greenland. It is a moral decision, but it is also risky. Mr Trump publicly criticised the Prime Minister for surrendering the Chagos Islands on Tuesday. So much for the special relationship. The UK does not have the muscle to hurt the US with retaliatory tariffs. After Brexit, it cannot rely on the protection of a larger trading bloc. The danger is that unsheltered Britain could be the collateral damage in a trade war between the behemoths of the US and EU. A tariff war will also put a fracturing Nato under even more strain, to the delight of Vladimir Putin, with potentially disastrous consequences for Ukraine and Europe’s security. European leaders still hope for a negotiated solution that protects Greenland’s sovereignty. But Mr Trump is convinced of their weakness and that he has them over a barrel.