U.S. President Donald Trump suggested Friday that he may punish countries with tariffs if they don't back the U.S. controlling Greenland, a message that came as a bipartisan Congressional delegation sought to lower tensions in the Danish capital. Trump for months has insisted that the U.S. should control Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark, and said earlier this week that anything less than the Arctic island being in U.S. hands would be "unacceptable."
Yeah, Leila, the issue was looming so large that it risked overshadowing the talks on Ukraine. So before they even got to work on Ukraine, they issued a statement on Greenland. France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Britain and Denmark issued a statement stressing that Greenland, quote, "belongs to its people and that only Denmark and Greenland can decide the island's future." But the statement did not condemn the U.S.' aggressive language or what some see as threats to European sovereignty. No, it spoke of, quote, collective action to protect the Arctic "in conjunction with NATO" and the U.S.