Donald Trump has dropped his threat to impose tariffs on European countries because of their support for Denmark’s ownership of Greenland.
In a late night post on social media, the US President said that NATO’s Secretary General had convinced him into a “framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland.”
The post came within hours of Trump’s speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos in which he ruled out taking military action to gain Greenland.
Instead he said that negotiations with Denmark, about the US purchasing Greenland, would start immediately.
In the speech, Donald Trump mistakenly mixed up Greenland and Iceland four times. That led the former French Europe Minister, Nathalie Loiseau, to joke: “If I were Ireland, I’d start to worry.”
An emergency EU summit will go ahead this evening, a spokesperson for European Council President Costa confirmed.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin – who is also in Davos – welcomed the news that Trump had stepped back from the brink.
“We need to de-escalate and engage on the areas that matter; our economy and society”, he said.
Speaking on the same stage as Trump this morning, the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz said that “any attempt to acquire territory by force would be unacceptable and tariffs would undermine transatlantic relations.”