We heard that former Rep Billy Long, Trump's nominee for ambassador to Iceland, joked to members on the floor last night that Iceland will be the 52nd state and he'll be governor, Politico wrote in its morning newsletter. The reaction in Reykjavik was swift. In a statement to the Guardian, Iceland's foreign ministry said it had contacted the US embassy for clarification.
At their disposal are mainly three options: The use of the so-called "trade bazooka" a never-before-used instrument that could even go as far as restricting market access for US companies in the EU. The implementation of retaliatory tariffs. The suspension of the EU-US trade deal, which has yet to come into effect. EU heads of state and government will meet for a summit on Thursday a dinner cobbled together in haste to coordinate which of those options the bloc will use in response to Trump's threats.
Our reason for requesting the meeting has been to move the entire discussion... into a meeting room, where you can look each other in the eye and talk through these issues," Lkke said following a foreign policy meeting in Denmark's parliament.
It's one step forward, one step back in Europe's relations with the US. Just hours after the Coalition of the Willing made a big step towards providing Ukraine with long-awaited security guarantees with potential UK and French troops deployments and all briefly seemed to be going in the right direction once again, the White House said that using US military is always an option for acquiring Greenland.
"It's in that spirit that we can still talk about a fracturing, more dangerous, world, in which the U.S. is less vaunted, the USD loses its reserve currency status, and where the U.S. focuses instead on the Western Hemisphere as its sole and defendable redoubt," the pair explained.
The White House said in a statement in response to queries from Reuters that Trump sees acquiring Greenland as a US national security priority necessary to "deter our adversaries in the Arctic region." "The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilising the US military is always an option at the commander-in-chief's disposal," the White House said.
