President-elect Donald J. Trump has threatened tariffs on many international locations 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 degree” if it refused to permit Greenland — a North American island that’s an autonomous territory inside the Kingdom of Denmark — to turn out to be a part of america.
“They need to give it up, as a result of we’d like it for nationwide safety,” Mr. Trump mentioned of Greenland.
Denmark, which has a smaller inhabitants than New York Metropolis, isn’t an enormous buying and selling accomplice for america. The nation — a U.S. ally and a NATO member — despatched america greater than $11 billion price of products in 2023, only a tiny slice of greater than $3 trillion of imports. America, 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 overseas and safety affairs, is house to some merchandise which might be very well-loved in America, items that might turn out to be dearer if Mr. Trump follows by means of with heavy tariffs. In keeping with the Observatory of Financial Complexity, a commerce knowledge platform, roughly half of Denmark’s current exports to america 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 medication. The corporate is so necessary to the Danish economic system — it has lately accounted for half of Denmark’s personal sector job progress and the entire nation’s financial progress — that some have branded Denmark a “pharmastate.”
Novo Nordisk is growing its U.S. manufacturing 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, but it surely produces medication in Denmark and america for the U.S. market.
A spokesperson for Novo Nordisk mentioned in an announcement that they had 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 Financial Complexity workforce, mentioned that Denmark’s exports of immunological merchandise, which incorporates medication like Ozempic, have been “rising exponentially.”
Denmark can also be the main provider to america of listening to aids, he mentioned.
Past medicines, Denmark additionally sends america 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 house to Lego Group, the world’s largest toymaker.
It’s not clear how a lot Lego exports straight from Denmark to america — 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.
However Lego, like different multinational firms which have international provide chains shuffling uncooked supplies and merchandise around the globe, may see its enterprise disrupted by tariffs. Mr. Trump has threatened to place levies on merchandise coming into america 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 recommended 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 language ships.
“Greenland belongs to the individuals of Greenland,” Greenland’s prime minister, Múte Egede wrote on Fb Tuesday. “Our future and combat for independence is our enterprise.”
On Wednesday, a spokesman for the European Fee referred to as Mr. Trump’s feedback about seizing Greenland as “hypothetical.” When requested about tariff threats, the spokesman mentioned that the European Fee 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 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 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 mentioned that ought to Mr. Trump observe by means of together with his menace to implement tariffs on Denmark, he may anticipate an E.U.-wide response. “This concept that he can strain Denmark as a single member state of the E.U., to supply coverage concession by threatening tariffs, goes to ask retaliation from the entire E.U.”
Mr. Trump put tariffs into impact on quite a few international locations and tons of 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 menace 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.”
