As a reminder, the World Economic Forum (WEF) is taking place in Davos this week. The event starts today until Friday but most of what we’ll be seeing on the agenda and on the sidelines are likely to take place from tomorrow onwards. You can check out the highlights of the agenda from earlier here: One last chance to preserve the old world order?
With global leaders set to get together, it’s going to be a bit of an awkward one now after Trump just threatened tariffs against European countries over the Greenland situation. In his words, the tariffs will be on “any and all goods” unless “a deal is reached for the complete and total purchase of Greenland”. 🤪
It will be a 10% levy starting from 1 February with it potentially jumping to 25% come 1 June after.
For now, the EU is still very much planning its retaliatory actions. And von der Leyen has to bring something to the table in any discussions with Trump on the matter. As things stand, Trump wants to play things out such as that he holds all the cards. However, we all know that this is all part of his negotiating tactic. Go big in the first ask and then water things down after.
That being said, the whole matter of Greenland might be a different situation than what we’ve seen before. So, we will have to see how serious this really is as compared to previous TACO episodes. Venezuela now serves as a precedent that anything goes.
The EU is reaffirming that there is no planned meeting yet between von der Leyen and Trump but that “engagement with the US is still continuing on all levels”. Adding that intensive consultations are now taking place among member states on a possible response to the US’ tariffs threat.
