Max Colchester

And they arrived.

And the way some European officials now see it is that Trump saw that not as a show of strength by Europe, as a sort of an antagonistic move by Europe to basically tell him to back off.

Yeah, exactly.

This was a bunch of European countries trying to flex their muscles and that actually Trump took this as a slight as opposed to a reassurance.

So Trump's response was to come out on Truth Social and threaten the contingent of around seven European countries that sent those troops with 10% tariffs by February 1st if they continued to stand in his way and stop him purchasing Greenland.

And they said that he would escalate that to 25% if they didn't basically relinquish and allow him to buy Greenland and that this would stay in place until the deal was done.

The EU does have a tool called the anti-coercion instrument or the bazooka, as they call it, whereby they can impose pretty stringent export and import restrictions on a country that tries to economically blackmail them.

They could restrict certain products they export to the US.

They could make it harder for US tech firms to operate here by tightening regulation.

They could impose tariffs on certain US products.

They could also restrict access to the financial markets here for US firms, which again would be problematic for them.

So they have tools to inflict economic pain on US-based businesses.

it'd be very risky for Europe, because obviously the US could respond.

And we've seen with Trump, he tends to escalate when faced with aggression.

So, you know, it's something that has to be calibrated very carefully.

And I think it's something that would take a while to deploy.

And actually quite a lot of the EU members would probably lobby against extremely stringent measures, fearing blowback on their own economies.

So it's not a silver bullet.

But, you know, in the face of some

provocation, they're going to have to do something.