After a weekend of Donald Trump threatening to slap tariffs on EU countries for opposing his drive to acquire Greenland, the question on European lips on Monday was: will the bloc finally punch back?
A string of national leaders has come out against the US president’s gambit, part of a long-running campaign to make the giant autonomous Danish territory part of America, with speculation mounting that the use of duties could trigger European retaliation.
To keep Trump engaged in Ukraine’s war against Russia, the EU has been reluctant to respond to his various punitive actions over the last year, but many in the bloc now believe that a threshold has been crossed.
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“If Greenland goes it’s all over, everything is gone … Nato, everything,” according to an EU official who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the sense of panic in Brussels.
Already, political groups in the European Parliament have signalled that they would not vote for an EU-US tariff deal reached last summer. An emergency meeting of the bloc’s 27 national leaders has been convened for Brussels on Thursday, with some expected to meet Trump in Davos before then.
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