- I liked this bit by Doctorow recently https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/
If you're getting tariffs anyway, why not just take the yoke of American business protection laws off your shoulders? Let French engineers sell jailbreaking hardware for iphones, or Romanian developers sell unlock keys for John Deere tractors.
- Takes century to bake biggest cake ever. Clown enters stage, applause. Clown throws cake to the ground. Audience waits for joke. Curtain falls. 38 trillion dollar bill for cake. Audience is the joke.
- Totally bizarre to watch the US transform from the endearingly crazy and rich friend to the one who holds you at gunpoint and robs you.
- To think Ted Cruz was partially on the money when he said in 2016 that "Donald might wake up one morning and nuke Denmark".
What has happened to the US...
- It's about time for EU to put 50% tax on American digital services, and get rid of all Microsoft products in public sector.
- This is great news, though a higher percentage would be welcome. The sooner Europe rips off the bandaid, the better.
- See the recent news about Canada strengthening economic ties with China and welcoming them into their auto market. This wouldn’t have happened in a million years had it not been for US tariffs and hostilities towards Canada. America is truly uniting the world (against them).
- So they will make the paperwork to ship from an EU country that doesn’t face the extra tariffs? EU is a single market. That’s the whole point of EU.
- > Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland would face the tariff and that it would climb to 25% on June 1 if a deal is not in place for “the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland” by the United States
- I wish Europe would just push back. More than what they are currently. There is so much potential there, but somehow the EU all look at the US as some form of idealogical father figure. Excuse the hyperbolic-talk.
- It is wildly fascinating to experience, in real time, how fragile the US system is. Trump really did show that the US is built on the assumption that people in power will behave, basically a honor system. Trump is stress testing every single aspect of the US.
He's dousing the US with gasoline, and fumbling around with matches. The people around him, knee deep in gas, are too afraid to take the matches from him.
In so many other countries, Trump would face a no confidence vote. Snap elections.
- My impression as a European is that trust in the United States has now been burned, and that companies are slowly, but inexorably, completely rethinking their dependence on the U.S. I believe this is a process that is not reversible in the medium term.
Trump, like any politician, will sooner or later pass. How many institutional reforms will the United States have to undertake, and how long will it take before the world trusts them again?
- Never thought I'd see NATO under such pressure in my lifetime.
- We will soon discover if the EU actually as a spine or is just a bendover for the US...(My money is on the latter, and I'm from EU)
- What's next? Will he stamp on the ground like a five year old? I mean, there's this treaty between the US and Denmark that they can build military bases etc.
"The U.S. has such a free hand in Greenland that it can pretty much do what it wants," said Mikkel Runge Olesen, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/world/europe/trump-greenl...
So what's the point? The guy in charge just can't ask nicely?
EDIT: I think the treaty is this one from 1951 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/den001.asp
- Being from the UK - one of the privileged few to be tariffed - I couldn’t give a fuck about this.
The thing that makes me viscerally angry in my soul though is reading about Greenlanders who are now stocking up on food and/or making plans to leave their country if the worst case happens.
What the actual fuck. I can’t believe this is the reality we’re living in.
So, tariff away. As someone else said, it’s a badge of honour at this point.
- The US is a complete mess and completely unreliable as a defense and business partner. Trump is driving Europe towards China. Even though China supports Russia against Ukraine, China seems much more dependable to do fair business with.
- For those who think the US is too big to fail, the U.K. in 1900 was the leading economy in the world with an empire on which the sun never set.
- What a time to be (still) alive.
When we look back in a few years and ask the question: who actually got to pay for the Epstein crimes and coverups, we come to the surprising answer it is the Greenlandes and other innocent societies that got ripped apart by this maniac and his supporters.
- A badge of honor. Although it's good to be cautious about retaliatory measures, it is perhaps time to think about imposing a digital services tax.
That being said, it's quite weird that these tariffs are imposed only on some EU countries (plus UK). How could that possibly work? EU companies can just export goods via other EU countries.
- Can this be revoked after the midterms? In that case I guess the EU can wait it out.
- Lol Trump can't understand that he can't charge tariffs to an specific EU country. He is a big moron and his voters the little morons.
Nevermind, I hope he changes his mind and set a 1000% instead 10 so we can broke relations with such a stupid government. USA is following steps that Germany already took and its citizens are responsible of its crimes.
- Why cut a deal with Trump?
Few months later he will throw a fit about something else and threaten tariffs…
- When tariffs are imposed in this way (explicitly as a punitive response to political opposition, a coercive measure), we might as well call them what they are... economic sanctions or perhaps... economic terrorism.
<Cuba has entered the chat...>
- Wow. Not The Onion.
- So Trump doesn't like the fact that some European countries dare to oppose his dictat, so in response he's going to... raise the prices on US consumers?
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- And the question is, What the hell is in the Epstein files that this is needed.... :-)
- There's no reason for the US to own Greenland except for the hyperfixation of one man. I hate that this is the world we continue to live in.
- If I had a hammer…
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- As a American, given what the US is becoming now, also given that Denmark actually has reliable public healthcare and the US canceled it for its own people, Greenland is better off staying with Denmark than with the US. If Russia were to invade, NATO still holds.
This is about more oil mining, about Trump appeasing to his oil friends, considering Greenland very likely has a substantial quantity of it.
- He was actually asked about why he is even doing this nonsense by the NYT, since they can get Denmark already to agree on any new military bases (they already have one) or mineral extraction anyway:
Just imagine the amount of lives that it will cost to carve him from his bloody throne and drag his supporters into deprogramming camps. It will only get more costly with each passing month.David E. Sanger: Why is ownership important here? President Trump: Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document, that you can have a base. Katie Rogers Psychologically important to you or to the United States? President Trump Psychologically important for me. Now, maybe another president would feel differently, but so far I’ve been right about everything. - I am wondering why Trump seems so eager to turn America back into a 19th-century. Slavery next on his agenda?
- So in order to threaten our great continent and civilisation, Trump is threatening to raise taxes on Americans. The USA is so cringe.
- All this Greenland stupidity could be an ongoing distraction from the Epstein files, Wag the Dog style. The attack on Venezuela coincidentally was the day that the DOJ was supposed to explain their redactions to Congress, which they didn't do and there hasn't been a peep since. I don't know what's in those files but I do know that Trump fought tooth and nail against Congress voting to release them, and he wouldn't have done that if they weren't damming.
- With this the EU-US tariff deal from earlier goes down in flames. It apparently wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.
Not surprising given how Trump and the fascist MAGA crowd acts.
The UK are in a precarious spot though due to not being inside the EU single market and are forced to find their own way out with a much weaker hand.
Brexit forever and ever coming back to haunt the UK.
- Why didn't Russia think of that? They could have just placed tariffs on France, Germany, the UK, etc. if they don't facilitate Russia purchasing Ukraine for a price of their choice /s
- Since the only thing Trump understands is force, I am looking forward to the retaliation from and military positioning of EU member states to defend Greenland. Perhaps it is what is needed to finally impeach.