DAVOS, Switzerland — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he had reached the “framework” of a deal on Greenland, backing away from his earlier demands to acquire the Danish territory after days of escalating threats and once-unthinkable worries about the most powerful member of NATO turning its weapons against one of its oldest allies.
Declaring that he would scrap planned tariffs on Europe, Trump said talks were underway with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte about bolstering security in the Arctic. The announcement, made on Trump’s social media account, was the latest head-spinning twist in his effort to seize Greenland from Denmark despite Danish and Greenlandic objections that the island is not for sale. And it marked a retreat from a push to claim another nation’s territory as his own, which had unsettled markets as the European Union readied economic retaliation.
The president offered few details, but the deal was likely to fall far short of the full sovereign possession that he previously demanded. Denmark’s top diplomat said that the United States would not “own” the island, and Rutte is not empowered to negotiate the transfer of territory from one NATO member to another.
“We have formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region. This solution, if consummated, will be a great one for the United States of America, and all NATO Nations,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, saying that the proposed Golden Dome missile defense system was subject to further discussions “as it pertains to Greenland.”
Trump’s reversal came after a one-on-one meeting with Rutte, amid a frenzy of diplomacy at a snowy gathering of global economic elites that aimed at keeping the U.S. president from blowing up relations with Washington’s closest and oldest allies.
The deal is “right now a little bit in progress but pretty far along,” Trump told reporters in Davos. “It gets us everything we needed to get.” Separately, he told CNBC in an interview that the deal would last “forever,” while repeatedly declining to say whether it would involve ownership of Greenland.
Danish leaders said the day was ending better than it had started.
Trump’s removing the tariff threat “takes the heat out,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen told a Danish broadcaster. The U.S. will not “own Greenland,” he said. “That is a red line.”
Discussions will focus on ensuring Arctic security, NATO spokeswoman Allison Hart said in a statement, including talks among Denmark, Greenland and the U.S. “aimed at ensuring that Russia and China never gain a foothold — economically or militarily — in Greenland.”
Earlier Wednesday, Trump appeared unyielding in his demand that the U.S. acquire Greenland, ruling out military force while underscoring his willingness to use economic and diplomatic pressure against allies, in a speech before foreign leaders and business executives gathered for a forum meant to foster global cooperation.
“We want a piece of ice for world protection, and they won’t give it. We’ve never asked for anything else,” Trump on Wednesday told a packed room at the World Economic Forum here. “They have a choice. You can say yes, and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no, and we will remember.”
The address underscored a defining feature of Trump’s second term: a willingness to wield U.S. power coercively — through threats, tariffs and leverage — even against allies, while showing little interest in persuasion or consensus-building. Rather than tailoring his message to an event created to foster international collaboration, Trump delivered a speech that rebuked alliances that have defined U.S. foreign policy for generations and derided Europe’s economic policies.
He spoke for more than an hour, weaving from the economy to nostalgia for the age of European imperialism and the backlash to his immigration crackdown in Minnesota during his second speech in as many days defending policies that have struggled to gain traction at home and abroad.
The fallout was swift. Shortly after his remarks concluded, the European Parliament suspended ratification of the E.U.-U.S. trade deal that Trump reached last year. In a statement, Bernd Lange, chair of the legislative trade committee, said U.S. threats against Denmark and Greenland left lawmakers no choice.
“By threatening the territorial integrity and sovereignty of an E.U. member state and by using tariffs as a coercive instrument, the U.S. is undermining the stability and predictability of E.U.-U.S. trade relations,” he said.
It wasn’t immediately obvious whether Trump’s backing down on the tariffs would lead to a renewed effort in the European Parliament to ratify the deal.
Danish officials said earlier that Denmark and Greenland had proposed a NATO mission to the territory in a meeting with Rutte on Monday, possibly providing a way out of the dispute.
Danish and NATO diplomats had also signaled they were ready to address Trump’s grievances by expanding the presence of U.S. troops or bases in Greenland and offering investment in mineral extraction.
The pending trade deal would have eliminated European tariffs on all U.S. industrial goods while leaving products from Europe facing a 15 percent tariff imposed by Trump, a structure analysts said favored Washington. The European Union is the nation’s largest trading partner; total two-way goods trade each year is roughly $1 trillion.
European lawmakers’ work on the deal will not resume “until the U.S. decides to reengage on a path of cooperation rather than confrontation,” Lange said before Trump’s more conciliatory announcement.
The president is joined in Davos by multiple cabinet secretaries, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whom Trump repeatedly praised during his speech in rare moments that drew applause. In one revealing aside, Trump praised European imperial expansion, saying there was nothing wrong with nations having expanded their territory through empire-building and drawing an explicit comparison to his push to acquire Greenland.
It was a sharp break from the post-World War II U.S. foreign policy consensus, which has supported countries’ desire for independence from their colonial powers, then built a globalized trading system to weave those nations together.
Trump and his aides had previewed the Davos appearance as an opportunity to project U.S. strength while addressing domestic economic concerns. American presidents, in part because of the opulent optics, have mostly skipped the forum. But Trump chose to return for the second time, this year with the largest and most senior delegation in U.S. history.
Trump often delivers such addresses to stadiums full of supporters who roar and cheer whenever he speaks. This crowd listened largely in silence, save for a few laugh lines, such as when Trump referred to the sunglasses French President Emmanuel Macron wore during his speech on Tuesday.
On the overnight flight to Davos, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told reporters that Trump will travel next week to Iowa for a speech tailored to energy and the economy, and will make weekly trips ahead of the midterm elections.
Trump on Wednesday also discussed the executive order he announced the previous night to keep large investors from buying up single-family homes. The action directs federal agencies to join in the effort, tells the attorney general and Federal Trade Commission to review acquisitions for anticompetitive practices, and says the White House will work on legislative recommendations to make the policies law.
But Trump’s urgent interest in taking over Greenland from Denmark, a NATO ally, and his willingness to lambaste the E.U. overshadowed his effort to focus on his economic policy, at least to the throngs at Davos who had spent days in public and private weighing how to best thaw the tension with Trump.
Markets have been unsettled by heightened tensions between the U.S. and its NATO allies. Investors appeared relieved that Trump said he would not invade Greenland. Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq turned higher on the news after posting shallow losses earlier in the morning, with all three indexes ticking up as markets opened during the speech.
“Overall it feels like a relatively subdued address on the topics everyone anticipated,” said one banking executive in a text message, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional retribution.
Onstage, Trump’s voice sounded hoarse as he described falling gas prices. He appeared to confuse Greenland with its neighbor Iceland four times, attributing the Tuesday slide in the stock market to Iceland and not the trade war he started over his demands to purchase Greenland.
“Without us right now, you’d all be speaking German and a little Japanese perhaps,” he said to the crowd in Switzerland, where German is one of four national languages and the most commonly spoken.
Trump also recounted how he imposed 30 percent tariffs on Swiss imports before raising them to 39 percent after a conversation with the Swiss president “rubbed me the wrong way, I’ll be honest with you.”
Eventually, he backed down, he said, “because I don’t want to hurt people.”
The personal attack on the leader of the country hosting a large U.S. delegation this week underscored Trump’s readiness to use U.S. economic power coercively, even against close partners.
At a bilateral meeting shortly after the speech, Switzerland’s new president, Guy Parmelin, remained a cordial host.
“Without you, it’s not truly Davos,” Parmelin said.
“I agree,” Trump responded.
Trump met with the leaders of Poland, Belgium and Egypt on Wednesday, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. He then addressed business executives, mentioning the names of private-sector allies including Apple CEO Tim Cook and FIFA CEO Gianni Infantino.
Trump told reporters that he would meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was still in Ukraine as of Wednesday, on Thursday.
Also on Thursday, Trump is scheduled to lead a charter signing of the Board of Peace, which he is marketing as an international peace-building organization with permanent seats worth $1 billion. Nearly three dozen countries have agreed to at least temporarily join the project, a senior administration official said.
As Trump walked out of the room, attendees returned to the standard rituals of this economic conference, where access and leverage remained the central currencies — and none mattered more than proximity to the U.S. president.
Birnbaum reported from Washington. David Lynch, Rachel Siegel and Jacob Bogage in Washington and Ishaan Tharoor in Davos contributed to this report.
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