In a single post on Saturday night, President Trump upended months of progress on trade negotiations with an ultimatum that puts Europe on a crash course with the United States — long its closest ally and suddenly one of its biggest threats.
In the Truth Social post, Mr. Trump demanded a deal to buy Greenland, saying that otherwise he would slap tariffs on a group of European nations, first 10 percent in February, then 25 percent in June.
It appeared to leave little room for Europe to maneuver or negotiate in a harsh and combative era of geopolitics. It also left Europe with few options to counter Mr. Trump without repercussions.
European leaders are loath to accept the forced takeover of an autonomous territory that is controlled by Denmark, a member of both NATO and the European Union.
Officials and outside analysts increasingly argue that Europe will need to respond to Mr. Trump with force, most likely by hitting back on trade. But doing so could come at a heavy cost both to the bloc’s economy and to its security, since Europe remains heavily reliant on the United States for support through NATO and in Russia’s war with Ukraine.
“We either fight a trade war, or we’re in a real war,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a research institute in Brussels.
Europeans have spent more than a year insisting that Greenland is not for sale and have constantly repeated that the fate of the massive northern island must be decided by its people and by Denmark. Last week, a group of European nations sent personnel to Greenland for military exercises — a show of solidarity that may have triggered Mr. Trump, since the same nations are the ones to be slapped with tariffs.
The exercises were intended to reinforce Europe’s commitment to policing the Arctic. Mr. Trump has insisted that the United States needs to own Greenland to improve security in the region.
In that sense, the exercises were part of an ongoing effort to placate Mr. Trump. For weeks, officials across Europe had dismissed Mr. Trump’s threats to take Greenland, even by military force, as unlikely. Many saw them more as negotiating tactics and hoped that they could satisfy the American president with a willingness to beef up defense and spending on Greenland.
But Mr. Trump’s fixation on owning the island and his escalating rhetoric is crushing European hopes that appeasement and dialogue will work. Facing the reality that a negotiated compromise is less and less likely, Europeans are now racing to figure out how to respond to Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign.
Within hours of the post, members of the European Parliament announced that they will freeze the ratification of the trade deal that Mr. Trump and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, struck last summer. And members of European Parliament are openly calling for trade retaliation. Ambassadors from across the 27-nation bloc will gather in Brussels for an emergency meeting at 5 p.m. on Sunday, diplomats said.
Hitting back is complicated.
Europe has a trade weapon specifically created to defend against political coercion quickly and forcefully, and as Mr. Trump’s threats sank in, policymakers argued that this is the time to wield it.
The tool — officially called the “anti-coercion instrument,” unofficially called Europe’s trade “bazooka” — could be used to slap limitations on big American technology companies or other service providers that do large amounts of business on the continent. But using it would sharply ratchet up trans-Atlantic tensions.
Europe has spent the past year avoiding such escalation, and for a reason. The continent remains deeply reliant on the United States for NATO protection and for support against Russia in the war on Ukraine, so a full-on trade war could have consequences on other fronts.
“The question is — how far do you want to go?” said Penny Naas, an expert on European public policy at the German Marshall Fund think tank.
European leaders are still hoping that they might be able to talk things out. Ms. von der Leyen struck an accommodating tone in a social media post on Saturday night.
“Dialogue remains essential, and we are committed to building on the process begun already last week between the Kingdom of Denmark and the U.S.,” she wrote.
But she also warned that tariffs would “risk a dangerous downward spiral.”
So far, talks have been all but futile. Foreign policy officials from Denmark and Greenland met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance in Washington last week. Afterward, the Danes and Greenlanders acknowledged that the two sides remained at an impasse, but expressed hope.
The two sides, they noted, had agreed to set up a high-level working group to work through their issues.
That optimism was quickly snuffed out when the White House said that the group was meant to work on America’s “acquisition” of Greenland.
“This is just all brute force,” Ms. Naas said. “The president really wants Greenland, and he’s not backing off of it.”
Greenland shows little sign of wanting to be acquired, by money or by military force. Greenlanders have at times chafed at Danish power, but polls and interviews indicate that most don’t want to give up their free education and universal health care.
As Mr. Trump takes on a more aggressive posture, European leaders are growing blunter.
Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, wrote on social media on Saturday night that “no intimidation nor threat will influence us.” Ulf Kristersson, the prime minister of Sweden, wrote that “we will not let ourselves be blackmailed.”
Even Keir Starmer, the prime minister of Britain — which, like Norway, is not in the European Union, but was listed among the countries that will be slapped with tariffs — called Mr. Trump’s tariff move “completely wrong.” Mr. Starmer has carefully cultivated a positive relationship with the White House.
“We will of course be pursuing this directly with the U.S. administration,” he said in a statement.
Jeanna Smialek is the Brussels bureau chief for The Times.
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