Trump’s NATO ally tariffs could have far-reaching consequences

President Donald Trump announced that the US will impose additional 10% tariffs on those next month on NATO allies that symbolically dispatched small military units to Greenland ahead of upcoming multilateral drills there with Denmark, before scaling this to 25% on June 1.

The affected NATO allies are Denmark, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Finland. The announcement comes ahead of next week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, while the second deadline comes right before the next NATO summit.

Trump likely expects the issue, as well as the prospect of a new US-EU trade war that could follow the bloc’s lawmakers putting approval of last summer’s deal on hold in response to the new tariffs, to dominate discussions next week and ideally lead to a deal around the time of the NATO summit.

In the announcement, Trump said the US wants to purchase Greenland from Denmark, but he also importantly didn’t exclude using military means if Copenhagen refuses.

Given the weak state of the EU economy, due in no small part to its compliance with US sanctions that cut off low-cost energy imports from Russia, it’s unlikely that the EU could wage a protracted trade war with the US, let alone win one.

Likewise, while The Economist has speculated that affected NATO allies such as Germany might kick the US out of its bases there, neighboring Poland could host them instead, something it has been practically begging to do for years.

To channel what Trump told Russian President Volodymyr Zelensky during last year’s infamous White House meeting, Europe therefore has no cards, raising questions about why it would risk provoking Trump into what might soon become a trade war in which its affected NATO allies are doomed to lose.

The most realistic reason is that they wanted to virtue signal their commitment to the “rules-based order” that Trump shredded with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s capture during the US’ successful special military operation.

Given their junior-partner status vis-a-vis the US, which was already enshrined in the nature of their relations upon them complying with its anti-Russian sanctions but was radically reinforced amid the rapid restoration of US power under Trump 2.0, they should have bandwagoned with it.

After all, their relations with Russia are already ruined and ties with China aren’t anywhere near as close as they would need to be to rely on Beijing for balancing the US, so bandwagoning would have been the best option.

Instead of bandwagoning or balancing, the affected NATO allies, which consider themselves to be champions of the now-defunct “rules-based order” that was destroyed by the US’ own hand after it no longer served its interests, tried to militarily challenge it in a symbolic way, which provoked Trump.

Knowing how he views the world, which isn’t a secret since he’s open about his opinions, he arguably perceived that as both unacceptable and pathetic. He now wants to humiliate those who opposed him.

This includes the UK’s King Charles III, French President Emmanuel Macron and Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, all of whom he hitherto thought of as allies and whose countries play key roles in containing Russia.

If US relations with those three countries deteriorate in parallel with Trump’s personal ties with their leaders, then the US might stop flirting with extending support to NATO allies’ troops in Ukraine, which would remove the newly dangerous ambiguity over its approach toward the issue.

Furthermore, any worsening of US ties with Western Europe would please Poland, which envisages leading Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and has received tacit US support in pursuit of this grand strategic goal.

Likewise, the intra-EU tensions that might erupt as a result of the bloc’s lawmakers putting approval of last summer’s trade deal with the US on hold could help popularize Polish President Karol Nawrocki’s plans for reforming the EU, which regional countries might begin to collectively champion.

The consequences that might follow Trump’s latest tariffs against several NATO allies include the US abandoning its new interest in backing radical security guarantees for Ukraine due to worsening ties between the US and Western Europe; acceleration of US strategic reprioritization of increasingly Polish-led CEE over Western Europe; and a Polish-led widening of the intra-EU rift between Western and CEE over respectively centralizing the bloc or reforming it to preserve members’ sovereignty.

All of these are plausible but only in the scenario of protracted problems between the US and the affected NATO allies, which might not come to pass if they re-evaluate their strategic positions, realize that they have no cards and therefore promptly abandon their opposition to Greenland’s purchase.

If instead they stubbornly double down for ideological reasons, then the consequences could be far-reaching and further diminish their influence in global affairs.

This article was first published on Andrew Korybko’s Substack and is republished with kind permission. Become an Andrew Korybko Newsletter subscriber here.