The delicious irony is that the EU really really cannot afford to employ its most powerful trade weapons against America. Not yet anyways.
Aside from the enormous and frankly unsustainable direct economic costs of doing so, from a game theory perspective alone that’s a no-no, because the economic ‘bazooka’ is the EU only deployable weapon against the U.S. of any worth or note.
Because if they fire their one and only shot trying to dissuade America, America might as well actually go and take Greenland since the EU will be hard pressed to actually cause America any additional pain.
This means America can basically safely deploy tariffs against the EU with minimal threat of proportionate reprisals.
If it was anyone else doing it, I would have actually thought that invading Greenland was the ploy to force the EU to hold back economic reprisals as America raid its economies. But it’s hard to seriously think Trump would go for such a subtle game plan.
