Europe and the United States: breakdown?

Sunday 18 January 2026

The deterioration in relations between the United States and Europe has, over the past decade, been gradual, cumulative and often obscured by the continuing rituals of alliance. The threat by the President of the United States to impose imminent tariffs on specific European countries in response to their political support for Greenland brings this slow corrosion abruptly into view. It is not merely a trade dispute, nor even a quarrel over Arctic policy. It is a moment in which geopolitical posture and geoeconomic coercion intersect, exposing the fragility of assumptions that have underpinned the transatlantic relationship since the end of the Cold War.

At the surface, the disagreement concerns Greenland, an island whose strategic value has increased sharply as climate change opens Arctic sea routes and renders mineral deposits more accessible. For Washington Greenland is a military outpost and a future resource hub, critical to missile warning systems and Arctic power projection. For European states, particularly those with close constitutional or political ties to the island, support for Greenland reflects commitments to self determination, environmental stewardship and regional stability. The clash arises not because these positions are irreconcilable, but because the United States has chosen to frame European alignment with Greenland as a hostile act, to be punished through tariffs.

This choice matters. Tariffs are not neutral economic instruments. They are blunt tools of power that deliberately impose domestic costs on allies in order to extract political compliance. When applied against Europe, they strike at the core of the transatlantic economic compact, which rests on predictability, rule based trade and the mutual recognition that economic interdependence is a stabilising force. By threatening tariffs in response to a political disagreement, Washington signals that economic integration is no longer insulated from geopolitical retaliation. For European capitals, this erodes trust more effectively than any rhetorical slight.

The episode also reflects a broader geoeconomic recalibration in Washington. Over recent years the United States has increasingly treated trade as an extension of strategic competition, whether with China, with emerging economies or now with allies. Subsidies, export controls and tariffs have become instruments not merely of economic policy but of geopolitical discipline. Europe, by contrast, has been slower to abandon the language of partnership. She has spoken of strategic autonomy while continuing to assume that the transatlantic bond would ultimately constrain American coercion. The Greenland tariffs threaten that assumption directly.

For Europe the implications are unsettling. Many European economies remain deeply integrated with the United States in sectors ranging from aerospace and pharmaceuticals to digital services and defence manufacturing. Targeted tariffs on specific countries risk fragmenting European unity, inviting capitals to seek bilateral exemptions rather than collective responses. This in turn weakens the European Union’s capacity to act as a coherent geoeconomic actor. Yet acquiescence would be equally damaging. If European support for Greenland can be punished today, other political positions, on climate policy, on digital regulation or on relations with China, may be similarly targeted tomorrow.

Geopolitically, the dispute feeds into a wider sense that the United States increasingly views Europe less as a partner and more as a subordinate whose alignment is to be enforced rather than negotiated. This perception is amplified by earlier tensions over defence spending, energy policy and industrial subsidies. The result is a transatlantic relationship that remains militarily interdependent, particularly through NATO, but politically brittle. Alliances can survive disagreements, but they struggle to endure sustained coercion from within.

There is also a symbolic dimension to Greenland itself. The island sits at the intersection of indigenous rights, environmental vulnerability and great power rivalry. European support for Greenland resonates with a normative vision of international order that emphasises consent and sustainability. The American response, grounded in tariffs and threats, reflects a more transactional worldview. The clash is therefore not only about territory or trade, but about competing conceptions of power and legitimacy in international affairs.

For those attentive to the war in Ukraine and to Europe’s security dilemmas, the lesson is sobering. Europe’s reliance on the United States remains profound, yet her room for independent political judgement appears increasingly constrained by the risk of economic retaliation. This raises uncomfortable questions about resilience and sovereignty. If Europe cannot support a strategically peripheral territory like Greenland without facing tariffs, how robust is her capacity to pursue an autonomous foreign policy in more consequential theatres?

The likely outcome of the current dispute is some form of negotiated deescalation. Tariffs may be delayed, narrowed or exchanged for symbolic concessions. Yet even if the immediate crisis passes, the damage will linger. The precedent has been set that political disagreement can trigger economic punishment. Trust, once eroded, is slow to rebuild.

In that sense the threatened tariffs over Greenland are best understood not as an aberration, but as a symptom. They reveal a transatlantic relationship drifting from partnership towards conditionality, from shared purpose towards managed rivalry. For Europe, the challenge is not merely to respond to this specific threat, but to confront the broader reality that the old assumptions of automatic alignment no longer hold. How she adapts to that reality will shape the continent’s geopolitical and geoeconomic position for decades to come.