New York, Jan 21 In reactions to US President Donald Trump’s move to acquire Greenland and his renewed interest in annexing Canada, leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos have called for unity among the middle powers to resist pressures from the great powers.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the answer to the “instability and imbalances” facing the world is to build “bridges and more cooperation with the emerging countries, the BRICs and the G20, because the fragmentation of this world will not make sense”.
India is a member of BRICS and the G20.
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney said, “The middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you’re on the menu”.
Unlike them, the “great powers can afford now to go it alone”, he said.
With a touch of fatalism, he added that there was a “breaking of the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a brutal reality where the geopolitics of the great powers is not subject to any constraint”.
Without naming Trump or the US, he said, “Let me be direct: We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition”.
Trump has threatened to impose next month a 10 per cent tariff on France and seven other countries backing Denmark against his demand to annex its territory of Greenland.
The tariff was to escalate to 25 per cent in June.
He said that he wants to buy Greenland and has not ruled out military action to capture it.
European Union President Ursula Von der Leyen warned that Trump’s action would be “plunging us into a dangerous downward spiral [that] would only aid the very adversaries we are both so committed to keeping out of the strategic landscape”.
US officials attempted at Davos to give reassurances to Europeans.
Speaking to reporters, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called for calm and said the latest tariff threats could be compared to the massive tariffs Trump announced in April that set the stage for negotiations.
Trade Representative Jamieson Greer suggested in his speech at the Forum that the tariff threat was a negotiation ploy, but added that Trump is “very clear on what he expects on that front”.
Macron said the US openly aims “to weaken and subordinate Europe” through tariffs, and "the rules-based order is fading”.
But he also spoke of the threat from China, whose “massive excess capacities and distortive practices threaten to overwhelm entire industrial and commercial sectors”.
“Trade wars, protectionist escalation, races towards overproduction will only produce losers”, he said.
He also mentioned Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The answer to these threats is “more cooperation”, he said.
About the Trump threat to Greenland, he said, “France and Europe are attached to national sovereignty and independence, to the United Nations and to its charter”.
Invoking the experiences of the Second World War, where the US and France were on the same side, he said there was a need for cooperation and "we have decided to join a mutual exercise in Greenland without threatening anyone, but just supporting an ally and another European country, Denmark”.
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