US President Donald Trump is Humiliating his European Partners, and Loving It: Here’s Why

US President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House on January 21, 2025, in Washington, DC.
| Photo Credit: JIM WATSON/AFP

On January 7, just two weeks short of his inauguration, United States President-elect Donald J. Trump restated his intention of adding Greenland to the territory of the US, by force if necessary.

Rather than just an instance of Trumpish bombast, this projected land grab has featured in US strategic thinking dating back more than a century. During World War II, the US occupied Greenland following Nazi Germany’s seizure of Denmark. Post-war, Denmark’s membership of NATO and a 1951 treaty helped solidify America’s military presence there. Today, the US Space Force maintains a base at Pituffik on the territory’s north-western coast; more commonly known as the Thule Air Base, this provides a strategic location for the US’ ballistic missile early warning system.

Nevertheless, the abrupt revival of America’s old dream of annexing a massive chunk of European territory is telling. Taken together with Trump’s moves to end the war in Ukraine and his pledge to slap punitive new tariffs on European imports, it speaks to a sharp drop in temperature in the US’ dealings with its European partners. With the exception of fellow travellers fortified by Trump’s “Second Coming” (Viktor Orban in Hungary, for example, or Italian President Giorgia Meloni, the only European head to attend Trump’s inauguration), Europe’s leaders are visibly nervous.

In Denmark, which retains control of Greenland’s defence and security policy despite the autonomy the territory has enjoyed since 1979, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen finds herself in an unenviable frontline position. Already the recipient of a long telephone call from a belligerent and boorish Trump, for whom the word “no” apparently carries no meaning, she now confronts the prospect of punitive US economic reprisals.

EU-US relations could turn rocky

Unpleasant medicine in the form of hiked US trade tariffs is also in prospect for the European Union, “guilty” of consistently exporting more goods to the US than it has imported. In 2023, for example, the US goods trade deficit with the EU stood at 155.8 billion euros ($161.6 billion): something Trump clearly regards as an affront to US national pride.

“The European Union is very, very bad to us,” he told those attending the recent World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos during a teleconference. “From the standpoint of America, the EU treats us very, very unfairly…. They don’t take our farm products and they don’t take our cars…. Yet they send cars to us by the millions. They put tariffs on things that we want to do.… and they make it very difficult to bring products into Europe…. So they’re going to be in for tariffs. It’s the only way… you’re going to get fairness.”

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European jitters are being further stoked by Trump’s position on the war in Ukraine, about to enter its third year. With his long-standing hostility to the cost of the war for US taxpayers, and his regularly repeated aim of bringing the conflict to a swift end, Trump seems minded to wind up the entire show. Feelers have already been sent out to Russia; Vladimir Putin has declared himself willing to tango; and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky has made the colossal blunder of suggesting to Trump that the Russian President is out to “manipulate” him (a greater provocation and affront to Trump’s gargantuan ego could hardly be imagined). All this signals not just a business tycoon’s impatience to “seal the deal”, but something much weightier: a shift of strategic focus eastwards towards China, accurately identified as the US empire’s greatest incipient threat.

So much seems clear to French President Emmanuel Macron, who in the past has been eager to “bromance” Trump, to the point of making him guest of honour at July 14 national day celebrations in Paris. Macron is now talking of the need for Europe to “wake up” and pour even more of its resources into defence. “What will we do in Europe if our American ally withdraws its warships from the Mediterranean?” he asked rhetorically during a recent speech to the French military. “If they send their fighter jets from the Atlantic to the Pacific?”

Is Europe ready for change?

Such doom-laden possibilities must have been much chewed over by European leaders attending this year’s WEF (January 20-24), held at the Swiss luxury resort of Davos. With a singular ear for the ludicrous, the theme chosen for the 2025 gathering was “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age”: a turn of phrase readily contradicted by the flaunting of extreme private wealth that is the annual gathering’s hallmark feature. (Efforts to persuade attendees to abandon their private jets in favour of free train travel failed dismally, with private jet arrivals/departures at Zurich airport up 17 per cent compared with the same 3-day period last year.)

In her address to the summit, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, Europe’s de facto ruler-in-chief, sought to strike an upbeat, more environmentally attuned note. “Europe is ready for change”, she declared at the launch of the Global Energy Transition Forum, the latest addition to the stable of international climate change bodies pursuing noble ends.

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Noble, but forlorn. Across the Atlantic, Trump Mark II had already announced the withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement: the legally binding international treaty on climate change adopted at the Conference of Parties (COP21) in Paris back in 2015. Clearly relishing the chance to reassert the USA’s status as top dog of the world for whom the rules do not apply, he gleefully vowed to bring oil and gas prices down, “fill our strategic reserves up again, right to the top, and export American energy all over the world… We will drill, baby, drill!”

What goes around comes around. When it comes to defending a rule-based international order, upholding a structure of globally applicable law built up over decades, or even protecting its own territory from covetous eyes, Europe’s leadership finds itself on the shakiest of ground. As the French analyst and commentator Arnaud Bertrand noted in a social media post written a few days before Trump’s inauguration:

“Europe’s leaders (if you can call them so), in their eagerness to be ‘good allies’ by supporting the violation of international law in Gaza, have effectively signed their own continent’s permission slip for future dismemberment. They’ve forgotten that principles aren’t just moral luxuries—they’re practical shields, and once broken for others, they no longer protect you either.”

Susan Ram has spent much of her life viewing the world from different geographical locations. Born in London, she studied politics and international relations before setting off for South Asia: first to Nepal, and then to India, where fieldwork in Tamil Nadu developed into 20 years of residence.