Denmark struggles to stay calm in crisis over Trump threat to take Greenland

Copenhagen’s gloomy weather in January matches the mood among Danish politicians and business leaders.

“We take this situation very seriously,” said Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen of Donald Trump’s threats to acquire Greenland – and punish Denmark with high tariffs if it stands in the way.

But, he added, the government had “absolutely no ambition to intensify some war of words.”

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen played down Trump’s own suggestion that the US could use military force to seize Greenland. “I don’t have the fantasy to imagine that it will ever reach that,” he told Danish TV.

And Lars Sandahl Sorensen, CEO of Danish Industry, also said that “there is every reason not to panic … nobody is interested in a trade war.”

But behind the scenes, hastily arranged high-level meetings have been taking place in Copenhagen all week, reflecting the shock caused by Trump’s comments.

The Prime Minister of Greenland, Mute Egede, flew in to meet the prime minister and King Frederik X on Wednesday.

And on Thursday night, party leaders from across the political spectrum gathered for an extraordinary meeting on the crisis with Mette Frederiksen in the Danish parliament.

In the face of what many in Denmark call Trump’s “provocation”, Frederiksen has broadly tried to strike a conciliatory tone, repeatedly referring to the US as “Denmark’s closest partner”.

“It was only natural” that the Arctic and Greenland were interested in the United States, he added.

But he also said that any decision on the future of Greenland should be up to its people alone: ​​”Greenland belongs to Greenland… and Greenland themselves must define their future.”

Her careful approach is twofold.

On the one hand, Frederiksen is keen to avoid aggravating the situation. She has been burned before, in 2019, when Trump canceled a trip to Denmark after she said his offer to buy Greenland was “ridiculous”.

“Back then he only had another year in office, then things went back to normal,” former political journalist Erik Holstein told the BBC. “But this may be the new normal.”

But Frederiksen’s comments also speak to Denmark’s determination not to interfere in the internal affairs of Greenland – an autonomous territory with its own parliament and whose population is increasingly leaning towards independence.

“She should have been much clearer in rejecting the idea,” said opposition MP Rasmus Jarlov.

“This level of disrespect from the new president of the United States for very, very loyal allies and friends is record-setting,” he told the BBC, although he admitted that Trump’s forcefulness had “surprised everyone.”

The conservative MP believed that Frederiksen’s insistence that “only Greenland … can decide and define the future of Greenland” had put too much pressure on the island’s residents. “It would have been prudent and clever to stand behind Greenland and state clearly that Denmark does not want [a US takeover].”

The question of Greenland is a sensitive one for Denmark, whose prime minister recently officially apologized for leading a social experiment in the 1950s that saw Inuit children removed from their families to be re-educated as ” Model Danes”.

Last week, Greenland’s leader said the territory should free itself from “the shackles of colonialism.”

In doing so he took advantage of a growing nationalistic feeling, fueled by an interest among the younger generations of Greenland in the indigenous culture and history of the Inuit.

Most commentators now expect a successful independence referendum in the near future. Although it would be seen as a victory for many, it could also lead to a new set of problems, as 60% of Greenland’s economy is dependent on Denmark.

An independent Greenland would need to “make choices,” says Karsten Honge. The Green Left MP now fears that his preferred option of a new Commonwealth-style deal “based on equality and democracy” is unlikely to happen.

Sitting in his parliamentary office decorated with poems and paintings depicting scenes from Inuit life, Honge said Greenland would need to decide “how much it values ​​independence”. He could cut ties with Denmark and turn to the United States, said Honge, “but if you treasure independence then that doesn’t make sense.”

Opposition MP Jarlov argues that although there is no purpose in forcing Greenland to be part of Denmark, “it is very close to being an independent country already”.

Its capital Nuuk is self-governing, but relies on Copenhagen for currency control, foreign relations and defense – as well as substantial subsidies.

“Greenland today has more independence than Denmark has from the EU,” added Jarlov. “So I hope they think things through.”

Since Mette Frederiksen has the awkward task of responding firmly without offending Greenland or the United States, the staunch rebuttal to Trump’s comments so far has come from outside Denmark.

The principle of the inviolability of borders “applies to every country… no matter if it is a very small one or a very powerful one,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz warned, while French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the EU leaves other nations “attacking its sovereign borders”.

Their comments gave away the deep concern within the EU about how to handle the impending Trump presidency. “This is not only very serious for Greenland and Denmark – it is serious for the whole world and for the whole of Europe,” said MP Karsten Honge.

“Imagine a world – which we could be facing in just a few weeks – where international agreements do not exist. That would shake everything, and Denmark would only be a small part of it.”

Similarly, the Danish trade sector has been engulfed in deep nervousness after Trump said he would “price Denmark at a very high level” if he refused to cede Greenland to the United States.

A study by Danish Industry showed that in 2024 Denmark’s GDP would drop by three points if the US imposed 10% tariffs on imports from the EU to the US as part of a global trade war.

Singing Danish products from the influx of EU goods would be nearly impossible for the US, and would almost certainly lead to retaliatory measures from the EU. But trade industry professionals are taking few chances, and in Denmark as elsewhere on the continent a great deal of resources are being spent internally to plan for the possible outcomes of Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.

As his inauguration approaches, Danes are preparing as much as they can to weather the storm. There is a guarded hope that the president-elect could soon shift his focus to complaints towards other EU partners, and that the question of Greenland could be temporarily put aside.

But the discontent that came with Trump’s refusal to rule out military intervention to seize Greenland remains.

Karsten Honge said that Denmark would have to suffer whatever decision the US makes.

“They just need to send a small warship to travel down the coast of Greenland and send a polite letter to Denmark,” he said, but partly in jest.

“The last sentence would be: well, Denmark, what will you do about it?

“That’s the new reality when it comes to Trump.”