Oliver Crook

And if we do actually get a discussion where you have all three at the table, I think that would be a significant sign of progress.

We know apparently there will not be an invasion of Greenland, which is a large relief for everybody in Brussels and everybody presumably sitting in the room there in Davos.

We know that the tariffs will not go in effect on February the 1st, and we know that this is apparently down to Secretary General Mark Rutte's efforts to basically talk Trump down and, as ever, to create an off-ramp for the President of the United States to make it seem like there has been a victory in this, while at the same time trying to not contravene some of the red lines here in Europe.

So Trump has said about this...

that this basically will deliver everything the United States wants from a security standpoint, also from a raw material standpoint.

In terms of the actual details of the deal, we have very little.

We understand that it will apparently not impinge upon Danish sovereignty.

A deal is a deal.

And when friends shake hands, it must mean something.

Donald Trump, in what seems to be a sort of tradition now, before his trips coming to Europe, he was posting screenshots of text messages he got from Mark Rutte and from the president of France, Emmanuel Macron.

And I'll just read here what he put out.

And this is apparently a text from Macron saying, my friend, we are totally in line on Syria.

We can do great things on Iran.

I don't understand what you're doing with Greenland.

Let's try to build great things.

I can set up a G7 meeting after Davos in Paris on Thursday afternoon.

I can invite the Ukrainians, the Danish, the Syrians, the Russians in the margins.

Let's have dinner together in Paris and talk on Thursday before you go back to the United States.

That's what the Germans have called it, that this is now a red line where the word blackmail has come out from a number of different European leaders saying that the Americans are basically just blackmailing the Europeans in order to advance the political aim.

They basically will hold off on taking any retaliatory action until February the 4th to see if those tariffs in fact come in.