Stocks trimmed some losses Tuesday after President Donald Trump intensified his rhetoric on Greenland, threatening to impose new tariffs on countries opposing the sale of the Danish territory to the United States.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 454 points, or 0.92%. The S&P 500 dipped 1.07%, and the Nasdaq Composite slid 1.32%.
Trump announced in a Truth Social post on Saturday that eight NATO members’ U.S. imports will face escalating tariffs “until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.” The tariffs will start at 10% on Feb. 1 and rise to 25% on June 1, Trump said.
Trump then threatened to impose 200% tariffs on French wines and champagne, amid reports that the country’s president, Emmanuel Macron, is unwilling to join his so-called Board of Peace. Trump also hit out at the U.K., labeling the British government’s plan to hand over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands — one of which is the site of a U.K.-U.S. military base — to Mauritius as an “act of great stupidity.” He said the move was “another in a very long line of National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired.”
The U.S. stock market was closed Monday for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday.
“With the US off yesterday the implications of the tariff threats over Greenland had yet to fully percolate through financial markets,” Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid said in a Tuesday morning note. “Markets have reacted but there’s clearly room for bigger moves if the rhetoric increases further.”
There are “growing fears about some kind of retaliatory trade escalation from Europe, with increasingly strong comments from several officials,” Reid added.
European leaders have described Trump’s fresh tariff threats as “unacceptable” and are reportedly considering countermeasures — with France said to be pushing for the European Union to use its strongest economic counter-threat, known as the “Anti-Coercion Instrument.”
Trump, who is due to speak at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, said he had agreed to speak with European leaders at the conference to discuss his Greenland ambitions.
