Major EU states condemn Trump tariff threats, consider retaliation

By Philip Blenkinsop

BRUSSELS, Jan 18 (Reuters) – Major European Union states including Germany and France decried U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats over Greenland as blackmail on Sunday, as France proposed responding with a range of untested economic countermeasures.

Trump vowed on Saturday to implement a wave of increasing tariffs on EU members Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland, along with Britain and Norway, until the U.S. is allowed to buy Greenland.

All eight countries, already subject to U.S. tariffs of 10% and 15%, have sent small numbers of military personnel to Denmark’s vast Arctic island, as a row with the United States over its future escalates.

“Tariff threats undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral,” they said in a joint statement.

The Danish exercise in Greenland was designed to strengthen Arctic security and posed no threat to anyone, they said, adding that they were ready to engage in dialogue, based on principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a statement she was pleased with the consistent messages from other states, adding: “Europe will not be blackmailed”, a view echoed by Germany’s finance minister and Sweden’s prime minister.

“It’s blackmail what he’s doing,” Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel said on Dutch television of Trump’s threat.

COORDINATED EUROPEAN RESPONSE

Cyprus, holder of the rotating six-month EU presidency, summoned ambassadors to an emergency meeting in Brussels late on Sunday as EU leaders stepped up contacts.

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, visiting his Norwegian counterpart in Oslo, said Denmark would continue to focus on diplomacy, referring to an agreement Denmark, Greenland and the U.S. made on Wednesday to set up a working group.

“Even though we are now being confronted with these threats, we will naturally try to stay on that path,” Rasmussen said.

“The U.S. is also more than the U.S. president. I’ve just been there. There are also checks and balances in American society.” he added.

Meanwhile, a source close to Emmanuel Macron said the French President was pushing to activate the Anti-Coercion Instrument, which could limit access to public tenders, investments or banking activity or restrict trade in services, in which the U.S. has a surplus with the bloc, including digital services.

Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said that while there should be no doubt the EU would retaliate, it was “a bit premature” to activate the instrument.

And Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is closer to the U.S. President than some other EU leaders, described the tariff threat on Sunday as “a mistake”, adding she had spoken to Trump a few hours earlier and told him what she thought. 

“He seemed interesting in listening,” she told a briefing with reporters during a trip to Korea. 

BRITAIN’S POSITION ‘NON-NEGOTIABLE’

British Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said allies needed to work with the United States to resolve the dispute.

“Our position on Greenland is non-negotiable … It is in our collective interest to work together and not to start a war of words,” she told Sky News.

The U.S. tariff threats call into question trade deals struck with Britain in May and the EU in July.

The limited agreements have already faced criticism about their lopsided nature, with the U.S. maintaining broad tariffs, while their partners are required to remove import duties.

The European Parliament looks likely now to suspend its work on the EU-U.S. trade deal. It had been due to vote on removing many EU import duties on January 26-27, but Manfred Weber, head of the European People’s Party, the largest group in parliament, said late on Saturday that approval was not possible for now.

German Christian Democrat lawmaker Juergen Hardt also mooted what he told Bild newspaper could be a last resort “to bring President Trump to his senses on the Greenland issue”, a boycott of the soccer World Cup that the U.S. is hosting this year.  

(Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; additional reporting by Rene Wagner, Rachel More, Andreas Rinke, Elizabeth Piper, Michel Rose, John Irish, Francesca Landini, Torje Solsvik, Padraic Halpin, Stine Jacobsen, Nora Bulli and Toby Sterling; Editing by David Holmes and Alexander Smith)