
Trump’s Greenland strategy draws from familiar playbook
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. WASHINGTON—European leaders have for months responded to President Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland with a simple refrain: it isn’t for sale. Now, those same leaders are rushing to set up meetings with Trump about the future of the territory after the U.S.
president threatened to bludgeon Europe’s economy with stiff tariffs. The shift is the result of a familiar playbook for Trump: make audacious demands, threaten economic or military consequences if those demands aren’t met—then wait for his opponents to bend. On Tuesday, the president declined to take aggressive measures off the table.
Asked by a reporter how far he is willing to go to acquire Greenland, Trump replied: “You’ll find out." But he also at times struck a more conciliatory tone. “I think that we will work something out where NATO is going to be very happy, and where we’re going to be very happy," the president said at the White House. The president’s comments reflected a desire by some of his advisers to reach a compromise with Denmark, which controls the roughly 800,000-square-mile island, and ease tensions with European leaders.
It isn’t the first time Trump has leveraged the threat of economic pain to bring his opponents to the negotiating table. That strategy is at the center of his trade policy agenda. In Truth Social posts and in speeches, Trump warned allies and adversaries alike that they would face destructive tariffs, prompting countries to launch a spate of panicked negotiations with the administration to lower tariff rates.
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