Trump backs down from tariff war on Europe over Greenland. After a blustery and meandering speech in Switzerland Wednesday, President Trump said he will not impose an escalating barrage of tariffs on eight European nations on February 1, as he had vowed last Friday if America’s European allies opposed his effort to annex the Danish island of Greenland.
Trump made multiple efforts to claim Greenland as U.S. territory in his Wednesday speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as we noted atop yesterday’s newsletter. “That’s our territory,” Trump said. “This enormous unsecured island is actually part of North America,” he told his European audience.
But after a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte later in the day, Trump said he had changed his mind. As a result, “we have formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region,” Trump announced on social media, without sharing details of that agreement. “Based upon this understanding, I will not be imposing the Tariffs that were scheduled to go into effect on February 1st,” he said.
“Additional discussions are being held concerning the Golden Dome” U.S. missile defense system, which is still under development, “as it pertains to Greenland,” Trump added, again without elaborating.
Worth noting: The U.S. has had jurisdiction over military bases on Greenland for the past 75 years, so it remains unclear what would be substantively new about any deal Trump agreed to Wednesday. According to the New York Times, “Denmark would give the United States sovereignty over small pockets of Greenlandic land where the United States could build military bases, according to three senior officials.” But conditions for such base expansions had existed previously in the U.S.-Denmark agreement dating back to 1951. The Associated Press reported a similarly-thin development from Trump’s Wednesday negotiations, while noting “details were still being worked out.”
After his discussions with Trump, NATO’s Rutte said the subject of Greenland was not discussed. “That issue did not come up anymore in my conversation tonight with the president,” Rutte told Bret Baier of Fox. “He’s very much focused on what do we need to do to make sure that that huge arctic region, where change is taking place at the moment, where the Chinese and Russians are more and more active—how we can protect it. That was really the focus of our discussions,” the alliance leader said.
- By the way: Where is the military’s Golden Dome money going? U.S. lawmakers want to know, and they’ve stepped up their efforts to find out where at least $23 billion is headed. Now they’re writing their queries into law, Defense One’s Thomas Novelly reported Wednesday. The criticism, tucked into a four-bill package that included the annual defense appropriations bill on Tuesday, marks Congress’ latest concern over secrecy and spending on the missile defense initiative. Lawmakers said they haven’t received a master deployment schedule, cost schedule, performance metrics, or a finalized system architecture for the project.
But even after Trump bailed from his threat of economic war, European Union leaders “will rethink their ties with the U.S. at an emergency summit on Thursday,” Reuters reports from Brussels where Trump this week “badly shook confidence in the transatlantic relationship, diplomats said.”
Reminder about Trump’s tendency to resort to tariffs to punish allies: It’s pretty much only hurting Americans. The Wall Street Journal was the latest to affirm this point on Monday, citing new data from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy to report “American consumers and importers absorbed 96%” of the cost of Trump’s tariffs in 2025. And that “echoes recent reports by the Budget Lab at Yale and economists at Harvard Business School,” the Journal reported, writing, “Rather than acting as a tax on foreign producers, the tariffs functioned as a consumption tax on Americans.”
The bigger problem: “That is likely to fuel higher U.S. inflation over time,” said Julian Hinz, an economics professor at Germany’s Bielefeld University who co-authored the study for the Kiel Institute. And as is nearly always the case, when “Asked to choose the country’s top issue, Americans pick the economy by a nearly two-to-one margin over any other topic,” CNN reported last week marking one year into Trump’s second term. Relatedly, “A 55% majority say that Trump’s policies have worsened economic conditions in the country, with just 32% saying they’ve made an improvement.” (The New York Times similarly found 49% feel they’re worse off, with fewer than a third believing they’re better off today than they were one year ago.)
Also in CNN’s survey data: Trump’s Greenland plan (at net-negative 40 points) polls lower than his approval on the Epstein files (at net-negative 38 points). The Times, meanwhile, found Trump at -44 for his handling of the Epstein files and -13 on Venezuela; it did not ask about Greenland.
But Trump’s designs on Greenland have been music to Russia’s ears, as Simon Shuster explained Wednesday in The Atlantic. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the point himself when asked about Greenland Tuesday in Moscow. “I just want to highlight that the Euro-Atlantic idea of ensuring security and cooperation has discredited itself,” he said.
Why it matters: “By making a nakedly imperialist claim on the territory of a faithful American ally, Trump has made it far easier for Putin and Lavrov to justify Russia’s imperialist claim on Ukraine,” Shuster writes. “Western appeals to the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the autonomy of nations start to ring hollow when the country that anchors the West sets out to violate those principles so brazenly.”
And indeed Lavrov declared this week, “As President Trump said, Greenland is important to the security of the United States. Crimea is no less important to the security of Russia.” According to Shuster, the timing and disruption of Trump’s Greenland threat “sends a clear message to Moscow: They need only to bide their time, and the West may tear itself apart.” Previously, Lavrov said this week, “it would have been hard to imagine that such a thing could happen.”
After Trump’s speech at Davos, Peter Goodman of the New York Times reported in an analysis piece, “China Wins as Trump Cedes Leadership of the Global Economy.” He writes, “China is—at least rhetorically—invested in economic values that Mr. Trump has renounced: engagement in multilateral institutions to advance its causes, faith in the wealth-enhancing powers of global trade and recognition that no country is large enough or powerful enough to go it alone.”
What’s more, “Given that Europe’s largest economies—especially Germany—contain large-scale auto industries, and given that China has become the dominant source of electric vehicles and batteries, the two economic powers are likely to remain major industrial rivals.”
Also notable: Trump’s speech at Davos dipped into a substantial bit of racism, especially regarding his portrayal of Somali-Americans contrasted with Trump’s declared affinity for his European roots, as the Guardian’s David Smith pointed out on Wednesday.
Here’s Trump: “The west cannot mass-import foreign cultures which have failed to ever build a successful society of their own. I mean, we’re taking people from Somalia, and Somalia is a failed—it’s not a nation. Got no government, got no police, got no nothing,” Trump told the audience in Switzerland. “Can you believe that Somalia, they turned out to be higher IQ than we thought. I always say these are low IQ people.”
He continued, “Look, I am derived from Europe, Scotland, and Germany. 100% Scotland, my mother, 100% German. My father. And we believe deeply in the bonds we share with Europe as a civilization,” Trump said. “This is the precious inheritance that America and Europe have in common, and we share it. We share it but we have to keep it strong. We have to become stronger, more successful and more prosperous than ever. We have to defend that culture and rediscover the spirit that lifted the west from the depths of the dark ages to the pinnacle of human achievement,” he said before promoting the promises of artificial intelligence.
For your radar: “The U.S. Is Actively Seeking Regime Change in Cuba by the End of the Year,” the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
- Do you have questions about the Trump administration’s efforts to push regime change in 2026? We’ll be tackling the topic on our next Defense One Radio podcast later this week, and would love to hear your thoughts.
Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1931, the U.S. Navy ordered its first rotary-wing aircraft: a Pitcairn OP-1 autogyro.
Around the Defense Department
Army unveils new tank—five years early. Early versions of the M1E3 Abrams tank—minus weapons and electronic systems—will roll out to tank platoons for testing this summer, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George told reporters at the Detroit Auto Show on Wednesday. That’s five years ahead of the original schedule, thanks to a new acquisition strategy that leans heavily on commercial parts. Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports from Detroit, here.
Update: Qatar’s gift to Trump is expected to begin flying as Air Force One this summer, the Wall Street Journal reports. “It couldn’t be determined whether the plane will be a fully functional Air Force One by then, beyond likely containing a secure communications system and sporting a new coat of paint,” writes Marcus Weisgerber, who covered AF1 matters for Defense One. “Trump has been pushing the Air Force to get the Qatari plane ready for service, White House officials said, and staff have regularly asked for updates as the president continues to complain about the current jets.”
Note: That Qatari jet is part of the more than $1.4 billion Trump has pocketed since taking office last January, as the New York Times detailed in a stunning multimedia feature published this week (gift link).
Got an idea for reforming defense acquisition? The Pentagon’s all ears. “Bring us your most disruptive, most unconstrained ideas,” Mike Cadenazzi, assistant defense secretary for industrial base policy, said during a keynote speech at the Honolulu Defense Forum last week. “We need radically different outcomes in the defense industrial base. So we need radically different ideas on how to get there.”
Print munitions on the battlefield, suggested Lt. Gen. James Glynn, commander of Marine Forces Pacific. Read on, from Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad, here.
Thales is trying to find a buyer for sonar arrays cut loose when the Navy cancelled its Constellation-class frigate program. Read about that and more in this week’s Defense Business Brief newsletter by Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams.
Deportation nation
As far-right influencers and Fox pundits push the president to invoke the Insurrection Act, more active-duty soldiers have been given prepare-to-deploy orders for possible tasking in Minneapolis, MS Now reported Wednesday. The latest troops include “at least a few hundred” members of an Army military police brigade stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C.
That order follows a similar one issued last week to 1,500 soldiers from the Army’s 11th Airborne Division in Alaska, in addition to as many as 200 Texas National Guard troops, the New York Times reminded readers Wednesday.
Update: An appeals court just temporarily authorized ICE to use force against peaceful demonstrators, Reuters reported Wednesday after the 8th Circuit court put a hold on an injunction that had frozen such tactics. “The St. Louis-based appeals court sided with DHS on Wednesday in a brief unsigned order…while it weighs whether to issue a longer-term ruling that would pause it throughout the duration of the Trump administration’s appeal.”
Developing: Secret ICE memo authorizes breaking into homes without a judicial warrant, which would seem to violate the Constitution’s 4th amendment on unreasonable searches and seizures, the Associated Press reported Wednesday after a whistleblower complaint surfaced in a legal development that has jarred many experts and academics.
“For years, immigrant advocates, legal aid groups and local governments have urged people not to open their doors to immigration agents unless they are shown a warrant signed by a judge,” Rebecca Santana of AP writes. “That guidance is rooted in Supreme Court rulings that generally prohibit law enforcement from entering a home without judicial approval. The ICE directive directly undercuts that advice.”
Notable: The Department of Homeland Security’s own legal training materials say these sort of break-ins are unconstitutional. And that reported detail that ICE hid the memo from the public and passed it along only by word of mouth and private conversation suggests U.S. officials may have been aware of the destructive legal potential this policy seems to contain, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council observed. “This is the Trump administration trashing the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution in pursuit of its mass deportation agenda,” he added.
Reax: The case marks “such a departure from established Fourth Amendment rules that it’s perilously close to open disregard for constitutional rights,” said Joyce Vance, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama.
“State terrorism at its finest,” said John Horgan, professor at Georgia State University’s Department of Psychology and director of the Violent Extremism Research Group. “They are so desperate to instigate a violent confrontation that they will now attempt to break down your front door and enter your home without a warrant.”
“Pretty sure we fought a revolution over this,” said Penn State Associate Professor Zack Furness. “But knowing that also seems like part of their calculus, in terms of hoping for a violent reaction from the public they can use to justify additional oppressive/unconstitutional actions (regardless of whether such a reaction would be warranted, legally justifiable, etc.). It’s all so ugly and wrong.”
“I’d been led to believe the GOP was the party of private property rights,” said University of Minnesota law professor Charlotte Garden.
And in an update to yet another ICE detainee’s death in the U.S., the Jan. 3 passing of a 55-year-old Cuban man at a detention facility in Texas has now been ruled a homicide, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. His name was Geraldo Lunas Campos.
“Based on the investigative and examination findings, it is my opinion that the cause of death is asphyxia due to neck and torso compression,” Adam C. Gonzalez, deputy medical examiner for El Paso County, said in the report, which asserts, “The manner of death is homicide.”
“Mr. Lunas Campos’s family said that a fellow detainee saw the guards choke him to death, according to the legal filing they submitted on Tuesday,” the New York Times reports. “Another detainee saw Mr. Lunas Campos struggle with the guards before he died, the filing said. Both witnesses have since been given deportation notices.”
Also notable: U.S. officials have repeatedly changed their account of what happened, the Times reports. “On Jan. 9, ICE said that he had died after ‘experiencing medical distress.’ But after the Washington Post reported the family’s claims about the death last week, a Department of Homeland Security official said that Mr. Lunas Campos had died by suicide.”
Camp East Montana is located at the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso. Three men have died there in the past two months, including Campos. It’s the largest ICE detention center in the U.S., with a 5,000-person capacity. About 2,700 people are confined there presently, the Times reports.
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