{"id":7751,"date":"2026-01-21T16:29:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T16:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=7751"},"modified":"2026-02-09T18:44:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T18:44:07","slug":"7-ways-europe-could-hurt-the-u-s-if-trump-doesnt-back-down-over-greenland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=7751","title":{"rendered":"7 ways Europe could hurt the U.S. if Trump doesn\u2019t back down over Greenland"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

President Trump told those gathered at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos that he would not use force to take Greenland, and the world breathed a sigh of relief. But he is still pushing tariffs on Europe if Denmark refuses to sell its territory to the U.S.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s plan has outraged European leaders<\/a>. \u201cBeing a happy vassal is one thing. Being a miserable slave is something else,\u201d Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever said. French President Emmanuel Macron said Trump\u2019s \u201cendless accumulation of new tariffs\u201d was \u201cfundamentally unacceptable.\u201d Meanwhile, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for the EU to become \u201cindependent\u201d<\/a> from the U.S. and to make that independence \u201cpermanent.\u201d<\/p>\n

But does Europe have enough economic weaponry to force the White House to think again?<\/p>\n

\n

Maybe, according to Wall Street analysts.<\/p>\n

Here are seven ways the EU could hurt the U.S. economically if Trump refuses to take no for an answer on Greenland, according to research by George Saravelos of Deutsche Bank, Joachim Klement of Panmure Liberum<\/a>, Macquarie\u2019s Thierry Wizman and Gareth Berry, and Pantheon Macroeconomics\u2019 Samuel Tombs and Oliver Allen.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Reduce the supply of foreign direct investment into U.S. bonds and equities by incentivizing investors to keep their capital assets in Europe. \u201cEuropean countries own $8 trillion of U.S. bonds and equities, almost twice as much as the rest of the world combined,\u201d Saravelos told clients a few days ago.<\/li>\n
  2. Impose the $100 billion in duties on U.S. imports that were proposed and then dropped when the EU accepted a tariff deal last year.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  3. Use the Digital Services Act to further limit how U.S. tech companies operate.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  4. Implement the \u201cBuy European\u201d act to direct government purchases more toward European vendors.<\/li>\n
  5. Implement the Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI) to impose tariffs on U.S. services companies and companies linked to the U.S. government. The ACI would virtually ban U.S. services companies from operating in Europe, while Europe holds a trade surplus with the U.S. in services. This measure is often referred to as Europe\u2019s trade \u201cbazooka.\u201d<\/li>\n
  6. \u201cIntroduce export taxes on EU products exported to the U.S. that are hard to replace, such as chipmaking equipment or specialized machinery,\u201d Macquarie says. Removing U.S. access to Netherlands-based semiconductor industry supplier ASML, which has a virtual monopoly on some technologies, would create logistical challenges for many U.S tech companies.<\/li>\n
  7. Place sanctions on U.S. companies operating in Greenland.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u201cThe U.S. has one key weakness: It relies on others to pay its bills via large external deficits. Europe, on the other hand, is America\u2019s largest lender: European countries own $8 trillion of U.S. bonds and equities, almost twice as much as the rest of the world combined. In an environment where the geo-economic stability of the Western alliance is being disrupted existentially, it is not clear why Europeans would be as willing to play this part,\u201d Saravelos told clients in a note that annoyed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.<\/p>\n

    Trump is not likely to take this lying down. Klement wrote on his Substack: \u201cOf course, these actions will trigger an escalation by Trump in the short term, which is why some EU leaders like Friedrich Merz of Germany are currently trying to soften the EU\u2019s response. <\/p>\n

    \u201cBut 2025 also has shown that if countries remain firm, the escalation cycle ends within a couple of weeks and Trump rows back (or should I say, \u2018chickens out\u2019?) once he realizes he can\u2019t bully others into submission,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

    At Macquarie, the analysts warned that a comprehensive package of economic sanctions against the U.S. would increase price inflation in America. \u201cThe EU has the capacity to retaliate economically, and may do so in the hope that a firm EU retaliation (to threats or military action by the U.S.) will end the escalation cycle after a few weeks, and that this is a risk worth taking. What can the EU do, actually? The EU can do enough to hurt the U.S. economy and U.S. security, and these the trade-related measures would likely be jointly inflationary,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

    The ACI \u201cbazooka\u201d won\u2019t hobble the U.S., but it could hurt, Tombs and Allen say. \u201cU.S. services exports to the EU were $295 billion in 2024, equivalent to 0.9% of U.S. GDP, suggesting the harm could be much greater if the EU pulled this relatively new lever at its disposal than if it responded simply with tariffs, though its economy would be hurt more, too,\u201d they told clients.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    \n
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    President Trump told those gathered at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos that he would not use force to take Greenland, and the world breathed a sigh of relief.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":619,"featured_media":7752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[613,1703,4956,631,30,668,685],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n7 ways Europe could hurt the U.S. if Trump doesn\u2019t back down over Greenland - Frisco Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A comprehensive package of economic sanctions against the U.S. would increase price inflation in America.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=7751\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"7 ways Europe could hurt the U.S. if Trump doesn\u2019t back down over Greenland - 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