The final act of this week’s geopolitical drama may well play out in the rarified, oxygen-thin air of Davos. While the World Economic Forum prepares to host both President Trump and Chancellor Friedrich Merz this Wednesday, a more curious figure has emerged as the self-appointed “Trump-whisperer.” Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, banking on her rapport with the American president, is attempting to bridge a widening Atlantic chasm that the rest of Brussels views with a mix of terror and technocratic fury. As Council President António Costa summons a special summit for Thursday, the question remains: can Italian charm thaw a conflict that has already frozen the trans-atlantic trade order?
At the heart of this imbroglio is a crude, 19th-century real-estate demand. On Saturday, Trump expanded his grievances, announcing punitive tariffs against an “Octet” of European nations—Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Britain, the Netherlands, and Finland. The ultimatum is as unrefined as it is clear: until the United States is permitted to purchase the Danish territory of Greenland, these allies will be burdened with a 10 percent surcharge on all exports starting February 1, a figure threatened to swell to 25 percent by June. The targeted states have responded with the usual diplomatic boilerplate, asserting that “tariff threats undermine transatlantic relations,” while Merz has echoed a stern, if predictable, resolve to defend European sovereignty.
In response to this protectionist salvo, Brussels is hastily readying its so-called “Trade Bazooka.” The EU is contemplating a suite of retaliatory tariffs totaling 93 billion euros, targeting the dietary and industrial staples of the American heartland: bourbon, soybeans, poultry, and aircraft components. If a settlement remains elusive, these levies are set to trigger automatically on February 6. Even Germany has abandoned its traditional caution, with Emmanuel Macron reportedly urging the activation of the “Anti-Coercion Instrument”—a mothballed regulation designed to choke off trade in the face of international arm-twisting.
The immediate casualty of this ego-driven theater is the customs agreement painstakingly negotiated last year, which is now essentially a dead letter. Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul has already begun the eulogy, noting that such an agreement is simply not “tenable in the current climate.” Meanwhile, the Green Party’s Franziska Brantner has called for a stouter spine, suggesting a digital tax intended to force Trump to choose between the interests of his “Tech Bros” and his Arctic fantasies.
We are treated, then, to the squalid spectacle of a collision between the primitive, grasping instincts of a Queens real-estate developer and the terminal paralysis of a continent caught in a pincer of its own making. Brussels may thump its chest and brandish its “Bazooka” with all the theatrical self-importance it can summon, but a wretched, unspoken honesty hangs in the air like a bad smell: it is remarkably difficult to tell a boorish bully to go to hell when you are still pathetically reliant on his indulgence to keep the Russian wolf from the door in Ukraine.
