President-elect Donald J. Trump has threatened tariffs on many nations for a lot of totally different causes.
On Monday, he discovered a brand new function for his favourite financial device. Mr. Trump mentioned he would “tariff Denmark at a really excessive stage” if it refused to permit Greenland — a North American island that’s an autonomous territory inside the Kingdom of Denmark — to turn into a part of the USA.
“They need to give it up, as a result of we want it for nationwide safety,” Mr. Trump mentioned of Greenland.
Denmark, which has a smaller inhabitants than New York Metropolis, will not be an enormous buying and selling associate for the USA. The nation — a U.S. ally and a NATO member — despatched the USA greater than $11 billion worth of goods in 2023, only a tiny slice of greater than $3 trillion of imports. The USA, in flip, sends Denmark greater than $5 billion in items, together with industrial equipment, computer systems, plane and scientific devices.
However regardless of its small measurement, Denmark, which handles Greenland’s international and safety affairs, is house to some merchandise which can be very well-loved in America, items that might turn into costlier if Mr. Trump follows by means of with heavy tariffs. In accordance with the Observatory of Economic Complexity, a commerce information platform, roughly half of Denmark’s current exports to the USA are packaged medicines, insulin, vaccines and antibiotics.
That’s largely as a result of the nation is house to Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic and Wegovy, the favored weight-loss medicine. The corporate is so vital to the Danish economic system — it has recently accounted for half of Denmark’s non-public sector job progress and all the nation’s financial progress — that some have branded Denmark a “pharmastate.”
Novo Nordisk is increasing its U.S. production to satisfy the hovering demand for its GLP-1 weight reduction merchandise. The corporate doesn’t specify publicly how a lot of its merchandise are exported, however it produces medicine in Denmark and the USA for the U.S. market.
A spokesperson for Novo Nordisk mentioned in an announcement that they have been following the state of affairs intently however wouldn’t touch upon hypotheticals and hypothesis.
Gilberto Garcia, the chief economist at Datawheel and a member of the Observatory of Financial Complexity group, mentioned that Denmark’s exports of immunological merchandise, which incorporates medicine like Ozempic, have been “rising exponentially.”
Denmark can be the main provider to the USA of listening to aids, he mentioned.
Past medicines, Denmark additionally sends the USA medical devices, fish fillets, pig meat, coal tar oil, petroleum and baked items, amongst different merchandise, in keeping with the OEC.
And notably, for a lot of kids (and adults) Denmark is house to Lego Group, the world’s largest toymaker.
It’s not clear how a lot Lego exports straight from Denmark to the USA — the corporate serves a lot of the U.S. market from a manufacturing unit 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.
However Lego, like different multinational corporations which have world provide chains shuffling uncooked supplies and merchandise all over the world, might see its enterprise disrupted by tariffs. Mr. Trump has threatened to place levies on merchandise coming into the USA from Mexico, China and different nations globally, along with Denmark.
Mr. Trump’s threats to say Greenland got here in a rambling information convention wherein the president-elect additionally advised retaking the Panama Canal and making Canada an American state, all statements that riled international leaders.
Mr. Trump argued on Tuesday that U.S. possession of Greenland was a nationwide safety challenge, given the paths charted by Russian and Chinese language ships.
“Greenland belongs to the folks of Greenland,” Greenland’s prime minister, Múte Egede wrote on Facebook Tuesday. “Our future and battle for independence is our enterprise.”
On Wednesday, a spokesman for the European Fee known as Mr. Trump’s feedback about seizing Greenland as “hypothetical.” When requested about tariff threats, the spokesman mentioned that the European Fee had been getting ready for all potential implications of a Trump presidency on commerce in Europe.
Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow in Brussels on the Peterson Institute for Worldwide Economics, mentioned that few politicians in Europe take what Mr. Trump says actually.
“That is an outrageous demand,” Mr. Kirkegaard mentioned of Mr. Trump’s threats to take Greenland. “The one approach 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 mentioned that ought to Mr. Trump observe by means of along with his risk to implement tariffs on Denmark, he might 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 nations and a whole lot of billions of {dollars} of products in his first time period. However 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 thought to rename the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America.”
