President Donald Trump has floated the idea of levying tariffs against countries that don’t back his plans to take over Greenland.
“I may put a tariff on countries if they don’t go along with Greenland because we need Greenland for national security,” Trump said on Friday, at an unrelated event at the White House. “So I may do that.”
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In the aftermath of the U.S. military operation in Venezuela that led to the capture of the South American country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, Trump has doubled down on his desire to annex Greenland, an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. He has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. needs Greenland for “national security” reasons.
“Right now Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One earlier this month. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security. And Denmark is not going to be able to do it.”
Read More: Why Is Trump So Intent on Acquiring Greenland?
While Trump has claimed that the European Union also “needs” the U.S. to take control of the territory, European leaders have strongly objected to the idea. Seven of the top leaders on the continent defended Greenland’s sovereignty in a joint statement earlier this month, saying that “it is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.” And the same week, Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen told the U.S. to back off.
“No more pressure. No more hints. No more fantasies about annexation,” he said in a post on social media.
“When the President of the United States talks about ‘we need Greenland’ and connects us with Venezuela and military intervention, it’s not just wrong, it’s so disrespectful,” he said. “Our country is not an object of superpower rhetoric. We are a people. A land. And democracy. This has to be respected. Especially by close and loyal friends.”
U.S. officials met with the foreign ministers of Greenland and Denmark at the White House on Wednesday, but those talks failed to resolve the parties’ differences, with Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen saying that there is still a “fundamental disagreement” between Denmark and the U.S. over the fate of the territory. Also on Wednesday, Denmark announced that it was bolstering its military presence on and around Greenland. Some European NATO allies, including Sweden and Germany, said they would dispatch military personnel to the territory, too.
The Trump Administration has indicated that using force could be on the table in the push to acquire Greenland, with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt saying earlier this month that “utilizing the U.S. military is always an option at the Commander-in-Chief’s disposal.” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that a U.S. attack on Greenland would mark the end of NATO, of which both the U.S. and Denmark are founding members. Experts, meanwhile, have told TIME that taking over Greenland is not necessary for Trump to achieve his goals with respect to national security—and contended that staying in NATO is much more important to U.S. national security.
While Trump has not previously threatened to impose tariffs on nations that object to his plans for Greenland, the President has often deployed that tactic in other policy disagreements.
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