The depth of the rift between President Trump and Europe was on full display on Wednesday as Mr. Trump delivered remarks in Davos, Switzerland, airing his disdain for Europe’s immigration policies, its regulations and its strident unwillingness to give him Greenland, which he insists America must own.
For months, Europe has been looking to find a diplomatic answer to de-escalate the crisis. Hope for such an off ramp came late Wednesday, when Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social to announce that he and Mark Rutte, the NATO secretary general, were working on a deal that could resolve the dispute over Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark. He suggested that tariffs he had previously threatened to impose on European nations starting Feb. 1 would no longer kick in.
But neither he nor NATO provided any details of what such that framework might look like, and there is no guarantee that such a deal will be finished. A member of the Danish parliament from Greenland called the deal into question in a social media post, saying it had created “total confusion.”
The dust had not yet settled Wednesday night. But one thing was clear. Mr. Trump’s comments throughout the day underscored just how little the United States and Europe — long the closest of allies — now have in common.
“While we may no longer be literally staring down the barrel of a gun on the trans-Atlantic relationship, we are still in a very rocky place,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a research institute in Brussels.
“We are fundamentally at odds, in a way that can only reflect the very different values between most governments in Europe and the Trump administration,” he added.
European leaders, many of them shocked by Mr. Trump’s threats to take over the sovereign territory of an E.U. member and NATO ally, must still come together on what they might or should do if Mr. Trump changes his position again — and about the trans-Atlantic relationship more broadly.
