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Donald Trump’s latest tariff threats against Europe over his push to acquire Greenland have put his staunchest European allies in a difficult spot.
The reactions of rightwing politicians — many of whom previously lavished praise on the current US administration for calling out Europe’s woes — have ranged from silent to critical after Trump threatened to impose 10 per cent tariffs on eight countries, including the UK, France and Germany, unless they backed down in their defence of Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland.
None have condoned the US president’s ambition to annex the Arctic island as US territory, instead focusing on how the incident is showing up Europe’s domestic ills. Several laid the blame on Brussels for provoking Trump’s wrath.
Most have simply avoided mentioning Trump’s territorial ambitions as they try to remain in line with the Maga movement even as popular sentiment in Europe towards Trump has plunged.
Britain’s Nigel Farage, who has long maintained a political “bromance” with the US president frequenting his Mar-a-Lago resort and campaigning with him in 2016, said in response to the tariff threat that “we don’t always agree with the US government and in this case we certainly don’t. These tariffs will hurt us.”
He added an oblique reference to Trump’s territorial aims, comparing Greenland to the US position on the UK’s agreement to hand back control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, which the US ultimately condoned.
Alice Weidel, co-leader of Alternative for Germany, on Monday criticised the government led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz for “embarrassing itself” by sending a few soldiers to Greenland for 36 hours as part of a broader European mission. Instead, Weidel argued, Berlin should start “talks to avert a trade war and find a solution”.
The German far-right party, which sought to establish links with US populists as it climbed in the polls last year, has found itself in an uneasy position as public opinion in Germany has turned against the Trump administration following the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and the US president’s push to seize Greenland, a Nato territory.
Italy’s deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, who is a fan of both Trump and Vladimir Putin, and even wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the Russian president’s face, lashed out at France and Germany, blaming them for raising tensions with Washington over Greenland.
“More Trump tariffs? The frenzied announcements of sending troops here and there are reaping their bitter fruit,” Salvini’s far-right League party wrote on social media after Trump’s tariff announcement.
Robert Fico, the Eurosceptic Slovak prime minister who was in Florida with Trump on Saturday as he made the tariff threat, said that the two leaders had agreed that the EU is “an institution in deep crisis”, but made no reference to Greenland.
In line with France’s more hawkish stance, Jordan Bardella, president of the French far-right Rassemblement National, said on Sunday that “the threats issued by Donald Trump against the sovereignty of a state, all the more so a European one, are unacceptable”. He also called for last year’s trade deal between the EU and the US to be suspended.
A senior EU diplomat said that Trump’s latest trade salvo had unified the bloc more than his threats last year. EU ambassadors gathered in Brussels to discuss next steps on Sunday evening were broadly united in favour of a tougher approach, except for Hungary’s representative who did not take the floor.
Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s premier who on Sunday was photographed brandishing a letter inviting him to join Trump’s “peace board” for Gaza, used the US president’s attack on Europe to show that “the liberal world order is coming to an end”.
Orbán told Hungarian radio on Friday that Hungary’s bilateral trade and security agreements with countries including Russia, Turkey and the US were more important in the new “era of nations”.
Mateusz Morawiecki, the former Polish prime minister who co-chairs the hard right ECR party, told the FT he understood Washington’s concerns about Arctic security.
“Will Denmark be able to fend off potential Russian and Chinese aggressors from Greenland? I doubt it.”
Greenlanders should be given a referendum on whether they wished to join the US, he said. If they rejected it, Denmark should “negotiate a deal” with Trump.
“As much as I would wish international public law to be the main backbone of all international affairs, I’m a realist and I do know that this is not the fact and that we have to count with the brutal power of China and Russia and its allies.”
Asked if Washington was displaying hostile behaviour similar to Moscow’s and Beijing’s, he said: “Russia and China are totalitarian states. The US is not only a democracy but is also part of the free world.”
Additional reporting by Marton Dunai in Budapest and Raphael Minder in Warsaw
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