After boasting that he would compel Europe to give him Greenland or impose tariffs on them, even implying a willingness to use force if necessary,Trump caved. First Trump said that he would not use force, then said that he would not impose the tariffs because he had arrived at some kind of deal. That turns out be (no surprise) a lie.

Donald Trump has walked back his threat to impose sweeping US tariffs on eight European countries, claiming he had agreed “the framework of a future deal” on Greenland at the same time a Danish lawmaker called the deal “not real”.

Four days after vowing to introduce steep import duties on a string of US allies over their support for Greenland’s continued status as an autonomous Danish territory, the president backed down.
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Aaja Chemnitz Larsen, a Greenlandic member of the Danish parliament, wrote on Facebook Wednesday night that, despite Trump’s claim of having struck an agreement over her homeland with Nato, the military alliance has no mandate to negotiate anything about Greenland. “Nothing about us, without us,” she wrote.

Amid rumors that a mineral deal might have been discussed by Trump and Rutte in Davos, Chemnitz Larsen called the idea that Nato should have anything to say about Greenland’s sovereignty or minerals “completely out of the question”.

Sascha Faxe, a member of Denmark’s parliament, said in an interview with Sky News on Wednesday evening, that the deal Trump claims to have struck with Nato over Greenland is “not real”.

“The thing is, there can’t be a deal without having Greenland as part of the negotiations, first of all,” Faxe said.

She went on to reference Chemnitz Larsen’s earlier comments, saying: “I have heard from the Greenlanders that I know – so we have a Greenlandic MP in Denmark – and she’s very clear that this is not a prerogative of Rutte and Nato; they can’t trade the underground in Greenland, or Greenlandic security without Greenlanders being part of it.

“And they are very clear: Greenland is not for sale, they are not up for negotiations,” Faxe added. “So it’s not real negotiations, it’s two men who have had a conversation,” she said. “It’s definitely not a deal.”

This shows that when the Europeans stand firm together, Trump becomes a paper tiger.

His climbdown on tariffs came hours after the European parliament suspended indefinitely the ratification of the US-EU tariff deal sealed last summer, in a move that showed politicians were, for the first time, willing to face Trump down.

When Trump says that he has a ‘framework’ or ‘concept’ of deal, it means that he has nothing and are words designed to hide a humiliating retreat. He is living up to the epithet given him of being ‘TACO’ where TACO stands for ‘Trump Always Chickens Out’.

The weak link for Europe seems to be NATO secretary general Mark Rutte who looks eager to appease Trump and acts like he can unilaterally negotiate on behalf of NATO. I suspect that the conversation that he had with Trump where Trump said that they had arrived at a deal was specifically designed to allow Trump to try and save face.