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Jan. 19, 2026 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
25:59
'Give Me Greenland!' - Angry Trump Threatens Europe With Tariffs

President Trump has threatened several European countries - NATO allies - with tariffs of as much as 25 percent by June if Greenland is not handed over to the United States. What will Europe do? Also - a new study shows that tariffs do not work as claimed by the Trump Administration. You'll never guess who pays...

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Better Than Trump 00:11:09
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Happy Monday, Dr. Paul.
How are you?
Very well, thank you.
Doing well.
Good, good.
Better than Trump is doing when handling Greenland.
So we're going to talk about Greenland as if Greenland's the most important part of the world.
You know, just think of the energy and the arguing and all this wheeling and dealing.
And compared to, you know, some other, I don't think it's probably, I think I could list about 10 or 15 things a little bit ahead of Greenland.
And that is not to be.
So we'll deal with this and find out exactly what Trump has in store for us.
But it's a semi-complicated thing because there's not much real activity, you know, as if they can land practically up there.
But it is land and they fight over that.
And they're right now trying to figure out how they're going to, the people, not the deep state as much as Trump's supporters.
How are they going to handle this?
He wants Greenland.
And who else wants Greenland?
But so he's setting the stage for that, for a battle.
And of course, this week it's been accelerating this battle as if this is as good as Texas or something.
So anyway, that's going on.
And of course, this can't be done without some threats and innuendos.
Militarily, not as much as, say, Venezuela.
But there's another way to fight.
Indirectly, they can use tariffs and different kinds of threats like that to try to get their way.
But this is this is, and I know you'll have a perfect explanation for this, but this is this is sort of, you know, a little bit bigger issue for Trump to put some capital in here.
I mean, this is this is important.
It has to do with Nobel Peace Prizes, you know.
So that's a little bit confusing.
It's a little more complicated than I think the founders intended for us to be wheeling and dealing with.
Yeah, it's almost, I mean, Trump gets a fixed idea and he can't get away from it.
When he started his presidency, he said he wants Greenland.
We talked about it before, a little bit quirky, whatever.
And now he's gone and he's bombed Iran in June.
He went and did sort of a regime change in Venezuela.
He kidnapped a leader and his wife and said, we're going to steal all your oil.
And now he's gone back to Greenland and he's obsessed with Greenland.
He's going to get it by hook or by crook.
And the Europeans that are opposing him, well, first of all, they're hapless.
They're doing themselves no favors.
Over the weekend, they sent, they're going to defend Greenland.
So they sent 15 troops.
I think the UK sent one person.
It's actually almost comical and they're not helping matters by doing such a thing.
But that irritated Trump when they made this sort of play of pretending to send military there.
And he said, okay, if you guys are going to oppose me on this Greenland thing, I'm going to hit you back with tariffs, which as we remember, were supposed to be to help our own industrial sector re-emerge.
No, they're actually sanctions.
Now, this is a write-up from Will Porter on antiwar.com.
Trump slaps tariffs on European states opposed to the U.S. takeover of Greenland.
He announced a 10% tariff on eight European countries that have objected to his efforts to purchase Greenland.
And he says that Washington must control Greenland for the sake of world peace.
But then if you go to the next one, now that starts in February, but he says by June 1st, if you still oppose me, I will increase that tariff to 25% on top of the existing tariffs, of course, on Europe.
So that is going to be a huge amount of tariff, a huge hit to the economies of Europe as well.
So at least right now, he's claiming he means business on this.
You know, he gets away with this and talks about why are we for national security?
Because everybody is devoted to national security.
I think we are, especially because we think we can stay out of these nonsensical, undeclared, stupid wars that we got into.
So he's going to, he wants the people to visualize, you know, the Chinese and the Russians getting together and marching troops in there.
And I don't think that's quite going to happen.
But just think, you know, even now they're building battleships again.
And for 30 years, I've been complaining about, you know, building more aircraft carriers.
And it's all a boondoggle because in this day and age, I mean, we can put people, you know, at least equipment on Mars.
We can do it on the moon and all these things.
And they're worrying about owning this square of this land up here in Greenland to defend against Russia and China.
It doesn't make much sense.
And you know, Daniel, I've had some military experience in Texas.
That's right.
That's right.
Now, the other thing about it, Dr. Paul, is that for all the bluster about it, at least right now, Americans are not clamoring for Greenland.
Americans, in fact, are very, very much opposed to this.
Now, here's a couple of two different polls.
The first one is from CNN, if you put that up.
Most Americans oppose Trump's push on Greenland, a poll determines.
A new CNN poll found that three-quarters of Americans do not want the U.S. to take control of Greenland.
Go to the next one, and that 75% includes 52% who strongly reject the idea.
Now, there's another poll, the Quinnipiac poll, which we talked about last week.
Go to that next one.
86% of people in that poll are against any U.S. force to take Greenland.
So you can say, well, yeah, he's hinted at force, but he's not said he's going to take it.
He said the easy way or the hard way.
But even absent force, Dr. Paul put that next one up.
Meanwhile, 55% of respondents oppose the U.S. attempting to purchase Greenland.
So Americans don't want to take it by force, and they don't want to pay to buy Greenland.
They're just not interested.
But the president just doesn't care.
Well, you have to understand, Trump is looking for something more than, I think, national security.
He wants credit for peace.
He's looking for, you know, some recognition that he's the peace candidate.
And, of course, we were very sympathetic when he was talking in our direction, you know, of trying to stop the wars and don't start any new ones.
But things have changed so much.
And so I'm, in a way, impressed with some of these polls that they have changed because the propaganda is out there.
And I think also it's sort of a mixed bag more on our side to get people to think about this is that we're flat out broke.
You know, when they talk about bumping up the military budget from $1 trillion to one and a half, you know, $1.5 trillion.
And there's another announcement today that we're approaching $40 trillion acknowledged debt.
But obligation, of course, is much higher than that.
So this is something that just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
And I guess the people I get most frustrated with are the ones who should know better.
And the ones who even lean this way and who votes this way, if it's really safe and we won't offend and have the president doing something.
See, the problem there is the president has too much power.
I mean, it wasn't meant for the power to have a dictator and punish.
What are we talking about?
We're talking about punishing six states because they won't go along with our opinion or the opinion of a couple people about what we should do with Greenland.
I mean, it's beyond belief.
And his advisors, he has people like Stephen Miller.
If you listen to some of the things that Stephen Miller says, they're more unhinged than Trump.
You know, he says, we've got the power to take it and we will take.
We'll take whatever we want.
There are no rules that can constrain us.
He sounds like, he sounds like a little dictator.
He sounds like a madman.
But speaking of madmen, what everyone's talking about this morning is a letter that Trump sent to the prime minister of Norway.
If you put that next one up, Trump to Norway, no Nobel, no Greenland.
The letter that shocked Europe.
He sent a letter to the Norwegian Prime Minister, Jonas Gar Storr.
And here's what he said.
This is the actual letter.
I'm going to read it because everyone thought that this was fake.
They were saying fake news.
This didn't really happen.
He didn't really send it.
Someone's trying to make President Trump look bad.
But it has been confirmed by the administration, put up that next clip that he did indeed send this letter.
I think it was sent as a text to the prime minister of Norway.
He said, Dear Jonas, considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped eight wars plus all caps, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.
Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China.
And why do they have a right of ownership anyway?
There are no written documents.
It's only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago.
But we had boats landing there also.
I've done more for NATO than any other person since its founding.
And now NATO should do something for the United States.
The world is not secure unless we have complete and total control of Greenland.
Thank you, President DJT.
Sending Money to Solve Problems 00:09:06
I can see why people thought that was fake, trying to make him look bad.
Yeah, it seems unbelievable.
And what's the goal?
What motivates all of this?
You know, we have so many problems.
They do not make it proportional.
And that is the problem of facing a $40 trillion debt that's coming and all this stuff going on.
And then talking this long about it.
And, oh, well, we're not hardly spending any money.
We can get it for free.
What do you mean?
If we go to war in the Middle East, what?
Pay for it?
We're going to use the oil, yeah.
And Venezuela, oh, yeah, they're what they have the pumps out there.
All we have to do is back it up or steal another uh ship filled with their with their oil.
And uh, and they make it sound like it's plausible.
But to me, the frustration is that not only the politicians are wishy-washing, they go along, but I understand them a little bit more because political power is political power.
Whether it's right or wrong, it doesn't matter.
But if there's political power against you, the people in Washington worry about that, and they worry because their litmus test is uh you know getting re-elected.
So they have to play the game of satisfying the special interest, the deep state.
All these people have to be satisfied.
The military industrial complex at the same time, they do have to support and for hopefully even more so the people that vote them into office, their constituents.
And I think there's a growing uh difference between the two, and I think that's good.
I think some of the people are waking up, and you that poll you quoted is an evidence of that.
Yeah, they don't they're they're basically just tired of all this.
Well, here's the thing about the tariffs now: Trump's going to add these tariffs to Europe, uh, he's going to punish Europe.
But there's a new study out, and the Wall Street Journal has an article about it today.
There's a new study out, and it should be no news to any Austrian or free market thinker in economics.
It's pretty basic stuff.
But if you go to that Wall Street Journal, this just came out today.
Bad news: Americans are the ones paying for tariffs.
A new study finds Americans, not foreigners, are bearing almost the entire cost of U.S. tariffs, according to a new research that contradicts a key claim made by President Trump.
If you go to the next one, and suggests he might have a weaker hand in a re-emerging trade war, he Trump's repeatedly claimed that his historic tariffs deployed aggressively over the past year as both revenue raising and foreign policy tool will be paid by foreigners.
Such assertions had helped reinforce the president's bargaining power and encourage more foreign governments to do business with the U.S.
But if you go to the next one, here's the punchline.
Here's the key, Dr. Paul.
Analyzing $4 trillion of shipments between January 24 and November 25, the Kiel Institute, that's in Germany, it's a serious institute.
Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign exporters absorbed only about 4% of the burden of last year's U.F. tariffs increases by lowering their prices, while American consumers and importers absorbed 96%.
So we pay 96% of those tariffs.
Just think how long this has been going on, you know, six, eight months.
And the promise was we would collect all this money.
And whether they said it or not, a lot of us, including myself, I thought there would be something that the importers, you know, the people who send this stuff in would pay to send it to it.
So it's shocking to know that all these wonderful things.
So they say, well, before, you know, the cat's out of the bag now, and there are people starting to realize it, but they still say, well, you know, we're collecting a lot of money, a lot of money, and we have so much of it.
There's some people who have suffered from this.
So we're going to send them money and make up for their problems with that.
And they literally say, well, where'd they get the money?
They took it from the American people.
And then they call it tariffs.
And tariffs have been proven to be With the exception of a few circumstances, especially if there's wartime conditions or what.
But to use it the way they're being used now as a threats and doing this and now using threats about tariffs on NATO allies so that they go along with us getting Greenland, which we don't want.
Yeah, which we don't want.
Well, here's the next one from the Wall Street Journal article.
Rather than acting as a tax on foreign producers, The tariffs functioned as a consumption tax on Americans.
Here's Julian Hintz, professor, economics professor at Germany's Bileford University, who co-authored the study.
He said, there's no such thing as foreigners transferring wealth to the U.S. in the form of tariffs, tough tariffs.
The $200 billion in additional U.S. tariff revenue was paid almost exclusively by Americans.
He said that is likely to fuel higher U.S. inflation over time.
Now, Dr. Paul, I may have mentioned on the show, but I've experienced this personally because over Christmas, there's a particular shirt maker in the U.K. that I liked very much.
And I wanted to purchase some shirts for my son for Christmas presents.
And I bought a couple of them and the bill was $120.
And it was on sale.
You know, it was great sale.
But then I went and I did went through the checkout and they added $40 and that was the tariff, the additional fee for the tariffs.
So what looked like a reasonable deal, all of a sudden, $40 on top of $120, it became extremely expensive and it wasn't a good deal.
So the deception encouraged you to get it.
Otherwise, we thought, oh, the manufacturers are going to have to pay $40 to send it to you.
And, you know, they won't be able to sell as many things.
But the whole thing is just so fraudulent.
Just pass it on, yeah.
But when I think of problems like this, I see them as being rather minor compared to the fraudulent system of the monetary system, because that's when you're talking about trillions and trillions of dollars that are defrauded and people are taking advantage of this.
But I don't know.
I don't think people are going to wake up and suddenly change this.
I think crisis will get so bad that nobody, and in the past, tariffs can bring a trade to a halt.
And I think that this could be bigger than ever because there's been a lot more worldwide trade because of the modern efforts to trade and exchange goods and services.
But so I think when it comes down, it's going to be very bad, just like the financial bubbles.
If you have trillions of dollars of debt and malinvestment, when that comes down, it's bigger.
And I think that is another one that's bigger than ever.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, here's from the same article.
Now, this, again, shouldn't be a surprise to people who actually study real economics.
But they say, why haven't foreign producers cut their prices to sell more goods in the lucrative U.S. market?
If you can put that next one up, why haven't they done that?
Well, the German researchers suggest several possible reasons.
And I highlight this part.
This is what people don't understand, what Trump doesn't understand.
The exporters may have found buyers in other countries, or they may think that final tariff levels will change, which they have been changing all the time.
Dr. Paul, Trump wakes up one morning and he lifts the tariffs, and then he gets mad in the afternoon and puts them back on.
So yeah, either they found buyers in other countries or they will count on them changing.
They're going to get better.
And then also the scale of tariffs at 50% or more in places might mean it's better not to sell at all, given the impact on profit margins.
U.S. importers might also have long-standing relationships with foreign suppliers that they can't change quickly.
So they're just not selling it to us anymore.
It's just not worth it.
It's unreal.
And I don't, there's not going to be a happy ending or an easy landing because the distortion is so great.
And it's such a mixed thing.
Terrorists are usually involved with foreign policies and things, different motivations.
But this one is so superficial.
It's worrying about peace prizes and a few things.
Big Mess, Small Solutions 00:05:37
I mean, that's what this whole thing was about.
That I didn't get my peace prize.
I'm going to put tariffs on what?
It was six or eight countries.
And we'll see what happens.
And we will see what happens.
But you know what?
The administration changes their mind quite frequently.
And usually they've condition themselves and say, oh, yeah, the penalty is going to be $10 billion.
Oh, it won't be.
It's only going to be five after a month or two of people suffering.
But one of these days, even the correction is going to be too much.
But they get people all jimmed up for this and think that, but they don't ask the question, where does the president get this much authority?
But that's a delight.
Unfortunately, the support for this type of activity comes a lot from the Republican.
Now they have to.
They're in charge.
Supposedly, they're in charge.
So that's a big deal where they're getting their support.
And the individuals, when it comes to tight votes, in the Congress, it's a shame what they do.
And then two or three will be historic and switch their vote from the right vote to the wrong vote.
And they're friends with Trump again.
Yeah, there you go.
There you go.
Well, I'm going to close out this Monday.
And it is a holiday.
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We didn't mention that.
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And over to you, Dr. Very good.
And I too want to thank our viewers for tuning in today.
And although we tend to make fun, this is very serious business.
It could end up a lot worse because there is a theory and it's been sort of invoked many times over history that regulated trade and tariffs usually ends up with wars, more likely a war going on.
But people say, well, well, if you don't have these tariffs to regulate things, it won't be a mess, won't it be chaotic?
I said, no, it's exactly the opposite.
The exchanges will become smoother.
But the one thing is, is you have to not depend on regulatory agencies and the agencies coming in and regulating trade and figuring out where the politics get in.
And even at the threat of a political event, it's a big, big deal.
And the exchanges, if you did not have people doing this, which I think makes things worse, you have exchanges voluntarily.
Oh, that's a weird thing.
You mean that two people have to agree to it?
Yeah, that's it.
People will respond more to the argument.
Wouldn't that be a nice way for two people to get together?
Isn't that the way 90% of the people in the world do get along together?
Two people or two companies, whether they come together voluntarily.
But this is the opposite of voluntarism, and that's why we'll have a mess.
In trade and in function, internationally speaking, also the most important thing is to have a unit of account that is something understood and not vulnerable to a bunch of politicians who will alter it and debase the currency like what we're still suffering from, the big move in 1971 to dismiss any definition of our unit of account.
And then people say, oh, I wonder why we're in a mess.
Anyway, it's just too bad that we have to put up with this because the people who suffer aren't always the ones who are the guilty ones.
Matter of fact, too often, the design of programs like this are usually for the poor people in the middle class, and they end up paying percentage-wise more than any other.
So there's something to be said about free markets and free trade and volunteerism.
And it's not very complicated.
And when I'd be asked over the years, well, what would you do?
Where would you start?
And I say, well, it is overwhelming if you're going to do it piecemeal.
Why don't we just start with reading the Constitution since people take an oath to follow it and see what happens with the idea that if some things don't need to be there, you could change the Constitution like has been provided initially when the founders wrote the document.
Thanking Listeners 00:00:04
I do want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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