Record / E-2026-0020
Eight European governments issue joint statement against tariff threat over Greenland
In a Truth Social post timestamped 11:19 a.m. Eastern on January 17, 2026, Trump wrote that Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland would be charged a 10 percent tariff on all goods sent to the United States starting February 1, 2026, rising to 25 percent on June 1, 2026. The post stated: This Tariff will be due and payable until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland. On January 19, 2026, the eight governments issued a joint statement that the tariffs undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Europe will not be blackmailed, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the use of tariffs against allies completely wrong. European Union member states discussed reviving a suspended list of counter-tariffs on 93 billion euros of United States goods and activating the Anti-Coercion Instrument. Neither measure was activated, and no executive order, proclamation, or Federal Register document implementing the tariffs was ever issued.
Revised: Corrected 2026-08-23: the tariff announcement was made January 17, 2026, not January 16. The prior date came from a secondary account and did not survive verification. The announcing post was subsequently retrieved and is timestamped 11:19 a.m. Eastern on January 17, 2026; it is now cited directly rather than through outlet renderings.
Context
This entry is marked verified_modified because the announcement date was corrected from January 16 to January 17, 2026, and because the counter-tariff figure requires care. The 93 billion euro list was approved by the European Union in 2025 over a separate trade dispute and then suspended; its suspension was reported to lapse February 6, 2026. It was not a new package assembled in response to Greenland, and it was never activated, nor was the Anti-Coercion Instrument, which had never been used. The tariff threat itself was never implemented by any legal instrument and was dropped on January 21, 2026, which is recorded separately. The intake claim that all United States allies have turned against the United States is a generalization this site does not publish; this entry records one dated, countable instance. The announcing post was retrieved and its text confirmed against the archived page markup, so the tariff language is quoted from the post rather than from an outlet paraphrase. A second post carrying identical text, ID 115915851439933172, was published the following morning and is not the original; citations dated January 17 that point to it are off by a day. Archive snapshots of these post URLs selected automatically can resolve to a script placeholder containing no post text, so the snapshot cited here was confirmed to carry the body.
Sources
The document identifier is the citation. The URL is a resolution mechanism, and the archived copy is what the citation resolves to when the live link dies.
-
Truth Social post announcing tariffs on eight European countries over Greenland
Truth Social post ID 115911344443637897, posted January 17, 2026, 16:19:14 UTC, which is 11:19 a.m. EST
-
European leaders warn of dangerous downward spiral over Greenland tariffs, NPR
NPR, January 18, 2026
-
Dangerous downward spiral: European leaders slam Trump's tariff threat, Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera, January 19, 2026
-
EU seeks Greenland de-escalation while plotting tariff retaliation against Trump, Euronews
Euronews, Mared Gwyn Jones and Maria Tadeo, January 19, 2026, updated January 24, 2026
-
EU mulls responding to Trump by reviving 93 billion euro tariff move, Bloomberg via Fortune
Bloomberg, Alberto Nardelli and Jorge Valero, via Fortune, January 18, 2026