Scott Bessent to Europe: Let us bully you and don't fight back [View all]

[marmar]

The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has urged European countries not to retaliate against the US’s trade tariffs announced over the Greenland crisis.

Speaking in Davos during the World Economic Forum, Bessent said countries and companies should pause and “let things play out” after Donald Trump threatened a 25% tariff on a slew of European countries in his pursuit of the autonomous Danish territory.

As global stock markets fell amid political uncertainty, Bessent indicated that retaliatory tariffs would be unwise, citing last year’s tit-for-tat tariff war that broke out between the US and China.

Last April, Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcement caused turmoil in global stock markets before some countries agreed trade deals and markets recovered to reach record highs later in the year, fuelled in part by the AI boom. .................(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jan/20/scott-bessent-europe-trump-greenland-tariff-us-wef-davos