President-elect Donald J. Trump has threatened tariffs on many countries for many different reasons.
On Monday, he found a new purpose for his favorite economic tool. Trump said he would “tariff Denmark at a very high level” if it refused to allow Greenland – a North American island that is a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark – to become part of the United States.
“They should give it up, because we need it for national security,” Trump said of Greenland.
Denmark, which has a smaller population than New York City, is not a large trading partner for the United States. The country — a U.S. ally and NATO member — sent more than $11 billion worth of goods to the United States in 2023, just a small slice of more than $3 trillion in imports. The United States, in turn, sends Denmark more than $5 billion in goods, including industrial machinery, computers, aircraft and scientific instruments.
But despite its small size, Denmark, which handles Greenland’s foreign and security affairs, is home to some much-loved products in America, goods that could become more expensive if Trump imposes heavy tariffs. About half of Denmark’s recent exports to the United States are packaged medicines, insulin, vaccines and antibiotics, according to the Economic Complexity Observatory, a trade data platform.
This is largely due to the fact that the country is home to Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic and Wegovy, the popular weight-loss drugs. The company is so important to the Danish economy – it recently accounted for half of Denmark’s private sector job growth and all of the country’s economic growth – that some have called Denmark a “pharmaceutical state.”
Novo Nordisk is ramping up production in the United States to meet growing demand for its GLP-1 weight loss products. The company does not publicly say how many of its products are exported, but it produces drugs in Denmark and the United States for the U.S. market.
A spokesperson for Novo Nordisk said in a statement that they were following the situation closely but would not comment on hypotheticals and speculation.
Gilberto Garcia, chief economist at Datawheel and member of the Observatory of Economic Complexity team, said Danish exports of immunological products, which include drugs such as Ozempic, have “grown exponentially”.
Denmark is also the largest supplier of hearing aids to the United States, he said.
In addition to medicines, Denmark also sends medical instruments, fish fillets, pork, coal tar oil, petroleum and baked goods, among other products, to the United States, according to the OEC.
And in particular, for many children (and adults) Denmark is home to the Lego Group, the largest toy manufacturer in the world.
It’s unclear how much Lego exports directly from Denmark to the U.S. — the company serves much of the U.S. market from a factory in Mexico, as well as a new zero-carbon plant in Virginia. It also produces the toy bricks in factories in Hungary, the Czech Republic, China and Vietnam, as well as in Denmark. Lego did not respond to requests for comment.
But Lego, like other multinationals that have global supply chains that transport raw materials and products around the world, could see its business disrupted by tariffs. Trump has threatened to impose taxes on products entering the United States from Mexico, China and other countries globally, in addition to Denmark.
Trump’s threats to reclaim Greenland came in a rambling news conference in which the president-elect also suggested retaking the Panama Canal and making Canada an American state, all statements that have angered foreign leaders.
Trump argued Tuesday that U.S. possession of Greenland is a matter of national security, given the paths charted by Russian and Chinese ships.
“Greenland belongs to the Greenlandic people,” Greenlandic Prime Minister Múte Egede wrote on Facebook on Tuesday. “Our future and the fight for independence are our business.”
On Wednesday, a European Commission spokesperson called Trump’s comments about capturing Greenland “hypothetical.” Asked about tariff threats, the spokesperson said the European Commission was preparing for all the possible implications of a Trump presidency on trade in Europe.
Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior researcher in Brussels at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said few politicians in Europe take what Trump says literally.
“This is an outrageous request,” Kirkegaard said of Trump’s threats to conquer Greenland. “The only way you can logically think about it is that by making this outrageous request, Trump will get some concessions that he otherwise wouldn’t have gotten.”
Kirkegaard said that if Trump follows through on his threat to implement tariffs on Denmark, he could expect a European-level response. “The idea that we can pressure Denmark, as the EU’s only member state, to offer political concessions by threatening tariffs will elicit retaliation from across the EU.”
During his first term, Trump implemented tariffs on numerous countries and hundreds of billions of dollars in goods. But other tariff threats never materialized, and it’s unclear how many of his new threats he will follow through on.
On Tuesday, the president-elect also reiterated his threat to impose “very serious tariffs” on Mexico and Canada, complained about the U.S. trade deficit with Canada and the European Union and floated the idea of renaming the Gulf of Mexico “Gulf of Mexico”. America.”