Trump must take Greenland as Europe too 'weak' to ensure security: Bessent

By Tony Czuczka and María Paula Mijares Torres

 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent amplified President Donald Trump’s message to European allies that the US won’t back down on taking over Greenland, saying the continent is too weak to ensure its security. 

Bessent all but dismissed European Union threats to halt a tariff deal reached between Trump and the bloc last year, telling NBC News that the US president is using strategic leverage to get what he wants.

 

“First of all, the trade deal hasn’t been finalized, and an emergency action can be very different from another trade deal,” Bessent said Sunday in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press. Trump “leverages his emergency powers to do this,” he added. 

 

 

Trump’s latest salvo to wrest control of Greenland from Denmark — a Nato ally and EU member — slaps a 10 per cent tariff on goods from eight European countries on Feb 1, rising to 25 per cent in June. The escalation prompted outrage among EU leaders and a call by French President Emmanuel Macron to activate the bloc’s most powerful retaliation tool.

 

Trump’s expansive second-term agenda has repeatedly focused his ire on the EU and Nato, some of the closest US allies. His tariff announcement on Saturday followed moves by eight European countries, including Denmark, to hold token Nato military drills in Greenland as a bid to show the continent’s commitment to the island’s security.

 

Bessent laid out a rationale for Trump’s bid for Greenland, citing global competition in the Arctic, US plans for a “Golden Dome” missile shield and Europe’s previous reliance on Russian energy that he said was “funding” Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

 

Asked whether Trump’s stance toward Europe is a negotiating tactic, Bessent signaled the president wouldn’t change his mind.

 

“Europeans project weakness, US projects strength,” he said. “The president believes enhanced security is not possible without Greenland being part of the US.”

 

Kevin Hassett, Trump’s top economic adviser at the White House, suggested that Trump is still ready to make an unspecified deal over Greenland.

 

“Right now it’s really a good time for cooler heads to prevail and for us to disregard the rhetoric and get to the table and see if there can’t be deal worked out that’s best for everybody,” Hassett said on Fox News’ The Sunday Briefing.

 

While most of the pushback has come from Europe, some in Washington are also voicing misgivings.

 

Republican SeNator Thom Tillis and Democrat Jeanne Shaheen issued a joint statement urging the Trump administration to “turn off the threats and turn on diplomacy.”

 

SeNator Rand Paul, a libertarian Republican from Kentucky who regularly clashes with Trump over policy, said there’s “no emergency with Greenland.”

 

“That’s ridiculous,” Paul said Sunday on Meet the Press. While no Republican seNators support US military action to occupy Greenland, Trump “keeps rattling the cage, saying that,” he said.

 

“But as far as trying to buy it peacefully, you don’t get purchasers to come around by berating them and telling them you’ll take it anyway,” Paul said. 

 

Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Trump is making “a land grab.”

 

“Donald Trump wants to get his hands on the minerals and other resources of Greenland, just like the real reason he went into Venezuela,” Van Hollen said on ABC’s This Week.

 

With some European leaders suggesting that a US move to take Greenland would spell the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization after more than seven decades, Bessent said that’s “a false choice.”

 

“The European leaders will come around and they will understand that they need to be under the US security umbrella,” he told NBC.