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Four hours after his speech at Davos yesterday President Trump posted on Truth Social that he would not be imposing tariffs on countries that had sent military personnel to Greenland following his repeated demands to take control of it for the United States.
So what? He blinked, and blinked again. First, by announcing to the World Economic Forum that he would not use force against Greenland. Second, by taking tariffs as well as force off the table, at least in the business of adding Arctic territory to the map of America.
Does this mean the Greenland scare is over? Not exactly. Trump says he’s reached an unspecified “framework agreement” on the future of the island after talks with the Nato secretary general Mark Rutte, and any details will be hotly contested.
It does mean, though, that
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the dynamics of Trump’s strategy of bullying the world have changed;
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Mark Carney and Emmanuel Macron have showed that when significant economies stand up to him he pays attention, even if they are not superpowers;
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others need to internalise this lesson, among them the US Congress, the American business community and Keir Starmer.
Air Force Done. Trump’s appearance yesterday was a credit to him in that he showed up despite having to swap planes and fly to Zurich in a single-aisle Boeing 757. But his speech was a 70-minute embarrassment for the US, devoid of factual basis, replete with pointless rudeness directed at America’s allies and wearily repetitive like nothing so much as the international swansong of a bully who fears his comeuppance is due in the November midterms.
In his own words: “We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be frankly unstoppable. But I won’t do that. I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.”
In others’: “I’d hate to be his fact checker.” (Former Vice President Al Gore on Trump’s faulty history of Greenland, which he said the US “saved” in World War Two.) “He exploits weakness and responds to strength… He’s an invasive species in political terms.” (California’s Governor Gavin Newsom, a potential Democratic presidential contender.)
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What else did he say?
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That America has always been there for its Nato allies but he doubts that they would be there for America. This ignores the blood and treasure those allies, including Britain and the Kingdom of Denmark, have spent supporting US-led Nato operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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That China sells expensive wind turbines to “the stupid people” that it would never use itself. In reality China has the largest installed wind power capacity in the world.
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That he thought Somali pirates were “low IQ people”. Newsom condemned this afterwards as “disgusting” and the hallmark of a president trying to disguise weakness as strength.
The Carney insight. "Middle powers must act together because if we're not at the table, we're on the menu."
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The Macron insight. “We do prefer respect to bullies.”
The Starmer straddle. He insisted on “calm discussion” with the US. Absent from Davos, the closest he came to a personal role in seeing off a Trumpquake was to tell MPs he “would not yield” over Greenland.
The turning worm. History may yet see Davos 2026 as a hinge of history after which a respectable number of European leaders decided to stop indulging the Trump administration’s parody of statecraft and call it out instead. It’s rumoured that rather than sit and listen to a stream of insults from Howard Lutnick, Trump’s treasury secretary, Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, got up and walked out of a dinner.
Anything else? Indeed. This year’s Davos has not been all Trump and Greenland. A newcomer strolling down the promenade would have assumed it was all about AI. But attentive listeners will have wondered what substance if any underpins it. “Is it hype?” asked Ken Griffin, the billionaire investor, talking about the $500 billion being spent in the US alone on data centres. “Of course. You’re not going to generate that kind of spend unless you promise it’s going to change the world.”
What’s more… Griffin also warned of a “Liz Truss moment” for the US if bond vigilantes start questioning its creditworthiness. That scenario is less likely now that Europe has less reason to consider dumping US bonds to deter adventurism in Greenland, but the fundamentals of US badly led and heading in an irrational direction remain in place.
Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images