Trump threatens tariffs on countries not backing US takeover of Greenland

President Donald Trump suggested Friday that he may punish countries with tariffs if they don’t back the US controlling Greenland, a message that came as a Congressional delegation met Danish and Greenlandic lawmakers in Copenhagen and sought to lower tensions. 

Trump for months has insisted that the US should control Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark, and said earlier this week that anything less than the Arctic island being in US hands would be “unacceptable”. 

“I may put a tariff on countries if they don’t go along with Greenland,” he said Friday, without providing details. “We need Greenland for national security.” 

He had not previously mentioned using tariffs to try to force the issue.

Read moreEuropean military mission heads to Greenland as Trump's ambitions undeterred by talks

Earlier this week, the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland met in Washington this week with US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. 

That encounter didn’t resolve the deep differences, but did produce an agreement to set up a working group – on whose purpose Denmark and the White House then offered sharply diverging public views.

Greenland is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO ally of the US.

(FRANCE 24 with AP)