Inside the U.S. President's head-spinning Greenland U-turn

When President Trump arrived in the snow-covered Swiss Alpson Wednesday afternoon, European leaders were panicking that his efforts to acquire Greenland would trigger a trans-Atlantic conflagration.

- Alex Leary, Daniel Michaels, Bertrand Benoit & Robbie Gramer

President rules out using force to take control of Greenland and calls off promised tariffs on European nations.

(AFP)

By the time the sun set, Trump had backed down.The about-face followed days of back-channel conversations between Trump, his advisers and European leaders, including NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz , according to officials in Europe familiar with the discussions. They include a potential U.S. agreement with Denmark about stationing forces at bases in Greenland and expanded European efforts to boost security around the Arctic. The U.S. could receive a right of first refusal on investments in Greenland’s mineral resources—a veto aimed at preventing Russia and China from tapping the island's wealth—and in exchange Trump would take tariff threats off the table, the officials said.

Speaking to reporters, Trump called the framework “really fantastic,” but offered few details. He said he assumes Denmark, which controls Greenland, had been informed about the potential deal.

The White House declined to comment on the details of the proposed framework and a Trump administration official said the scope of the negotiations hadn't been set in stone. “If this deal goes through, and President Trump is very hopeful it will, the United States will be achieving all of its strategic goals with respect to Greenland, at very little cost, forever,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

There were early signals on Wednesday that Trump was open to a deal. During an hourlong speech at the World Economic Forum, the U.S. president said he wouldn't deploy the military to take control of Greenland.

It twas a stark shift in tone for Trump, who just days earlier had declined to rule out using the military to secure ownership of Greenland and posted an image online of the territory with an American flag plastered across it.