President-elect Donald J. Trump has threatened tariffs on many international locations for many different reasons.
On Monday, he discovered a brand new function for his favourite financial instrument. Mr. Trump stated he would “tariff Denmark at a really excessive stage” if it refused to permit Greenland — a North American island that’s an autonomous territory throughout the Kingdom of Denmark — to turn out to be a part of the United States.
“They ought to give it up, as a result of we’d like it for nationwide safety,” Mr. Trump stated of Greenland.
Denmark, which has a smaller inhabitants than New York City, shouldn’t be an enormous buying and selling accomplice for the United States. The nation — a U.S. ally and a NATO member — despatched the United States greater than $11 billion worth of goods in 2023, only a tiny slice of greater than $3 trillion of imports. The United States, in flip, sends Denmark greater than $5 billion in items, together with industrial equipment, computer systems, plane and scientific devices.
But regardless of its small measurement, Denmark, which handles Greenland’s overseas and safety affairs, is residence to some merchandise which are very well-loved in America, items that might turn out to be costlier if Mr. Trump follows by means of with heavy tariffs. According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, a commerce information platform, roughly half of Denmark’s latest exports to the United States are packaged medicines, insulin, vaccines and antibiotics.
That’s largely as a result of the nation is residence to Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic and Wegovy, the favored weight-loss medication. The firm is so necessary to the Danish economic system — it has recently accounted for half of Denmark’s non-public sector job development and all the nation’s financial development — that some have branded Denmark a “pharmastate.”
Novo Nordisk is increasing its U.S. production to fulfill the soaring demand for its GLP-1 weight loss products. The firm doesn’t specify publicly how a lot of its merchandise are exported, nevertheless it produces medication in Denmark and the United States for the U.S. market.
A spokesperson for Novo Nordisk stated in a press release that they have been following the scenario carefully however wouldn’t touch upon hypotheticals and hypothesis.
Gilberto Garcia, the chief economist at Datawheel and a member of the Observatory of Economic Complexity group, stated that Denmark’s exports of immunological merchandise, which incorporates medication like Ozempic, have been “rising exponentially.”
Denmark can be the main provider to the United States of listening to aids, he stated.
Beyond medicines, Denmark additionally sends the United States medical devices, fish fillets, pig meat, coal tar oil, petroleum and baked items, amongst different merchandise, based on the OEC.
And notably, for a lot of kids (and adults) Denmark is residence to Lego Group, the world’s largest toymaker.
It’s not clear how a lot Lego exports straight from Denmark to the United States — the corporate serves a lot of the U.S. market from a manufacturing facility in Mexico, in addition to a brand new carbon-neutral facility in Virginia. It additionally manufactures the toy bricks in factories in Hungary, the Czech Republic, China and Vietnam, in addition to Denmark. Lego didn’t reply to requests for remark.
But Lego, like different multinational corporations which have international provide chains shuffling uncooked supplies and merchandise world wide, may see its enterprise disrupted by tariffs. Mr. Trump has threatened to place levies on merchandise coming into the United States from Mexico, China and different international locations globally, along with Denmark.
Mr. Trump’s threats to assert Greenland got here in a rambling information convention during which the president-elect additionally instructed retaking the Panama Canal and making Canada an American state, all statements that riled overseas leaders.
Mr. Trump argued on Tuesday that U.S. possession of Greenland was a nationwide safety subject, given the paths charted by Russian and Chinese ships.
“Greenland belongs to the individuals of Greenland,” Greenland’s prime minister, Múte Egede wrote on Facebook Tuesday. “Our future and combat for independence is our enterprise.”
On Wednesday, a spokesman for the European Commission referred to as Mr. Trump’s feedback about seizing Greenland as “hypothetical.” When requested about tariff threats, the spokesman stated that the European Commission had been making ready for all attainable implications of a Trump presidency on commerce in Europe.
Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow in Brussels on the Peterson Institute for International Economics, stated that few politicians in Europe take what Mr. Trump says actually.
“This is an outrageous demand,” Mr. Kirkegaard stated of Mr. Trump’s threats to take Greenland. “The solely means you possibly can logically consider it’s that by making this outrageous demand, Trump goes to get some concessions he in any other case wouldn’t have gotten.”
Mr. Kirkegaard stated that ought to Mr. Trump observe by means of along with his risk to implement tariffs on Denmark, he may anticipate an E.U.-wide response. “This concept that he can stress Denmark as a single member state of the E.U., to supply coverage concession by threatening tariffs, goes to ask retaliation from all the E.U.”
Mr. Trump put tariffs into impact on quite a few international locations and a whole bunch of billions of {dollars} of products in his first time period. But different tariff threats by no means materialized, and it’s not clear what number of of his new threats he’ll observe by means of on.
On Tuesday, the president-elect additionally reiterated a risk to place “very critical tariffs” on Mexico and Canada, complained in regards to the U.S. commerce deficit with Canada and the European Union, and floated an concept to rename the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America.”
