In January 2026, the World Economic Forum in Davos—intended to serve as a platform for coordinating Western elites amid rising confrontation with the autocratic axis—instead, became a venue for open conflict between the Donald Trump administration and European leaders.
The third day of the conference was marked by a speech by President Trump in which he criticized the EU’s economic, migration, and trade policies, contrasting them with the measures implemented by the Republican administration during the first year of its term.
Trump’s negative assessment of Europe’s internal policies formed the basis of his argument that Europe is incapable of ensuring the resilience of the Arctic region against threats from the authoritarian axis.
Interpreting the EU’s economic and domestic political challenges as a strategic risk to the democratic bloc as a whole, Donald Trump stated that transferring Greenland to the United States was the only way to prevent external challenges to the Western world.
The introduction of the Greenland issue into the core Davos narrative reshaped the summit agenda. European leaders arrived in Switzerland with a clear demand for strategic predictability from Washington on two key fronts of confrontation with the autocratic axis.
These concerned the parameters of the U.S. approach to the Russia–Ukraine war and the contours of a potential U.S. operation against Iran. President Trump deliberately avoided engaging within these discussion frameworks, which Europeans sought to impose as baseline.
The refusal to legitimize EU-preferred discussion formats drove a maneuver by the White House. The administration shifted the focus to Greenland as an issue where Washington held the initiative, possessed asymmetric leverage, and could compel Europeans to react to White House actions.
As a result, the United States and its European allies diverged on critical positions where convergence was required—specifically on further containment of Russia and a coordinated framework for action against Iran.
This exposed a systemic weakness among democratic allies on the eve of a new phase of global escalation, granting the autocratic axis a strategic advantage.
President Trump’s conflict with European allies highlighted the asymmetry of instruments within the transatlantic coalition and provided the White House with a mechanism of procedural coercion that raises the political cost of Europe’s pursuit of strategic autonomy in trade, technology, and defense policy.
Over recent months, in the White House’s view, the EU has undertaken a series of steps unfriendly to Washington across trade, technology, and defense.
The EU is expanding its external economic ties in the Global South in parallel with institutional coordination with Canada and India, as well as with MERCOSUR (the South American integration bloc comprising Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay), forming a coordination framework that increasingly bypasses political alignment with the United States.
For the Trump administration, this constitutes a core problem, as Washington manages the democratic camp through prior synchronization of external decisions, while Europe’s autonomous policy packages undermine this logic precisely in critical regions of competition.
New EU trade agreements are no longer purely commercial, as they reduce European companies’ dependence on the U.S. market.
One of the most significant milestones in the EU’s expansion of external economic ties in the Global South was the signing of the EU–MERCOSUR Partnership Agreement, whose development spanned more than two decades.
The scale and terms of this agreement—approved by the Council of the EU on January 9, 2026, and signed by the presidents of the European Commission and MERCOSUR two days before the start of the Davos Forum—set it apart from Europe’s other trade partnerships with countries and international organizations in the Western Hemisphere.
The European side gains access to a market of approximately 700 million people, while tariff liberalization provides EU companies with more than €4 billion in annual savings on customs duties.
According to European Commission projections, EU exports to MERCOSUR will increase by 39% by 2040, reaching €48.7 billion, while imports from MERCOSUR will rise by 16.9%, totaling €8.9 billion.
For Brussels, this implies a reduction in structural dependence on the U.S. market and an expansion of room for autonomous political decision-making.
For the United States, the key risk lies in the political effects of the agreement that extend beyond tariffs. Deeper EU access to South American markets increases the autonomy of regional governments from U.S. economic pressure and creates an alternative source of legitimacy for elites seeking to pursue foreign policies without U.S. patronage.
Over the long-term trajectory of competition with the autocratic bloc, this weakens Washington’s ability to consolidate the Western Hemisphere as a stable resource, logistics, and manufacturing rear base for the democratic camp.
A free trade area between the EU and four leading South American states—two of which are the continent’s largest economies—undermines the effectiveness of Washington’s “new Monroe Doctrine,” under which the entire Western Hemisphere is treated as a sphere of exclusive U.S. interests.
The strategy chosen by the Republican administration in Latin America envisages the creation of controlled hierarchical relationships between the White House and local governments.
Under this approach, key external agreements by countries in the region are adopted and implemented exclusively through informal approval by Washington, contingent on their compatibility with U.S. security and economic priorities.
The U.S. military operation in Venezuela, which resulted in the arrest of Nicolás Maduro, served as a signal to regional states that attempts to seek alternative economic and geopolitical partners or to deepen external ties without regard for U.S. positions would trigger trade restrictions and military pressure from Washington.
Segments of Latin American ruling elites—represented by governments and parties critical of the Trump administration—were shown that efforts to establish political dynamics autonomous from the United States would be met with their replacement by figures more loyal to Washington.
Whereas in Venezuela this transformation was executed through a targeted operation and the direct removal of the country’s leader from the governance system, the situation differs in other regional cases.
The ongoing political and economic pressure on the leadership of Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil indicates that the United States is prepared to influence domestic political dynamics in these states through alternative means as well.
Political support by Washington for opposition forces has become a key instrument of pressure on governments that do not accept the Western Hemisphere’s designation as a space of predominant U.S. influence.
During the 2025 elections in Chile, Honduras, and Bolivia, Washington indirectly supported candidates oriented toward cooperation with the Republican administration—ranging from public statements conditioning financial assistance to overt media support in personal comments by Donald Trump.
The victories of Washington-aligned candidates in Bolivia, Chile, and Honduras established a favorable trend for the Trump administration, which the White House intends to scale across other Latin American countries during the 2026 presidential election cycle.
Throughout 2026, the U.S. role in domestic political contests in South American countries will focus on identifying and supporting conservative alternatives to the incumbent leaders of Brazil and Colombia, as well as backing presidential candidates with personal and political ties to Washington and ideological proximity to the Republican administration.
The coercive, economic, and political instruments through which the United States replaces elites critical of the White House and adjusts the foreign policy orientation of Western Hemisphere states render independent EU trade engagement with South America a direct threat to the implementation of U.S. regional strategy.
The effectiveness of the Venezuela operation and the electoral successes of Washington-backed politicians in late 2025 provided the Trump administration with a “window of opportunity” for political transformation across the continent.
However, the ratification and entry into force of the EU–MERCOSUR agreement created risks for White House plans to turn Latin America into a strategic anchor in global competition.
To preserve its status as the sole and exclusive dominant power in the Western Hemisphere, the White House focused on blocking the effective launch of the partnership agreement between Brussels and MERCOSUR states.
To this end, the Trump administration simultaneously deployed two instruments of influence targeting EU institutions and the governments of key EU member states.
One instrument of pressure on Brussels was the escalation of White House rhetoric on Greenland, which increased the overall toxicity of the political environment for European governments at the moment when implementation of the MERCOSUR agreement was entering its final phase.
The European Commission and Latin American governments had planned to sign the partnership agreement on December 20, 2025. The delay occurred at the request of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who sought additional time to resolve internal disagreements within Italian society regarding the agreement.
European leaders expecting the greatest economic gains from the agreement agreed to grant Rome time until mid-January 2026.
In Washington, moves by European leadership toward strategic autonomy were closely monitored and interpreted as a departure from the previous model of prior coordination on key external decisions. Escalating tensions around Greenland forced European capitals to temporarily refocus on stabilizing relations within NATO.
In this context, implementation of the EU–MERCOSUR agreement became politically more complex, as any decision began to be assessed through the prism of risks to transatlantic security.
The crisis signaled that EU autonomy pursued without political synchronization with the United States translates into a package of coercive measures across trade, technology, and security—from tariffs and access to intelligence to participation in command-and-control frameworks and service support for critical platforms.
The intensification of U.S. military activity in Latin America heightened concerns within European societies about the risk of a potential U.S. armed operation in Greenland.
According to a survey of Dutch citizens conducted by Ipsos I&O from January 16–19, 2026, 48% of respondents believe that Washington’s inability to acquire the island by peaceful means would lead the United States to establish control over Greenland by force.
Meanwhile, six in ten Dutch respondents believe that U.S. annexation of Greenland would have devastating consequences for NATO.
A study conducted in January 2026 by INSA found that 61% of respondents in Germany view President Trump as a threat to the Federal Republic of Germany, while 52% believe that the government of Friedrich Merz should adopt a more decisive and principled position in relations with the United States.
Public anxiety in German and Dutch societies aligns with broader European trends. A survey published by Le Grand Continent of residents in France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Italy, and Poland indicates that 64% of respondents take a critical view of White House foreign policy.
Eighty-one percent believe that a U.S. armed operation in Greenland would constitute an act of aggression against Europe, and 63% support the deployment of European troops to the island.
EU societies are generating political demand for the Union’s strategic autonomy, most prominently in two key domains of dependence on the United States: digital infrastructure and defense capabilities.
Europe’s digital economy—including cloud computing and artificial intelligence tools—relies heavily on U.S. providers, granting Washington additional leverage over European allies.
AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud account for approximately 70% of the EU cloud infrastructure market. Around 80% of EU companies’ corporate spending on software and cloud services goes to U.S. vendors.
In Europe, Android and iOS control 100% of mobile operating systems, Windows holds 73% of desktops, Google Search exceeds 89% of web search, and the browser and social media markets are almost entirely dominated by U.S. platforms.
In November 2025, EU regulators designated a number of technology companies—including AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft—as critical third-party ICT providers for the EU financial sector, meaning infrastructure elements upon which the operational resilience of European financial institutions depends.
Following the escalation around Greenland, this risk ceased to be abstract and was converted into a political mandate to reduce dependence on U.S. digital infrastructure.
In November 2025, the governments of France and Germany convened a European Digital Sovereignty Summit, establishing a joint working group and defining principles for the development of AI, data services, and public digital infrastructure to ensure competitiveness vis-à-vis the U.S. technology sector.
Two months prior to the Davos Summit, the European Commission published the Cloud Sovereignty Framework, a document outlining eight categories of objectives for achieving digital self-sufficiency.
A European Parliament resolution of January 22, 2026, set the priority of European technological solutions in public procurement within the EU and authorized the European Commission to develop a legislative package to support local cloud service providers.
The second domain of vulnerability after digital infrastructure lies in defense and defines the limits of Europe’s freedom of maneuver within NATO.
Europe’s dependence on the United States is concentrated in core capabilities of modern warfare: intelligence and surveillance, command-and-control systems, strategic transport, long-range precision strikes, and the service support of platforms whose life cycles are tied to U.S. supplies and software updates.
Washington has signaled readiness to use as leverage the threat of reducing its role within NATO command structures, as well as the potential withdrawal of approximately 200 positions in units responsible for intelligence processing and operational planning.
In European government assessments, this is perceived as a prelude to a broader review of the U.S. military presence and as a warning.
A separate lever of pressure concerns the sustainment of the F-35 fleet, as its combat readiness depends on U.S.-controlled supply chains, maintenance, and regular software and mission-data updates. As a result, Washington retains the ability to degrade the effective capabilities of European air forces by constraining sustainment support.
In addition, the United States converts Europe’s dependence on U.S. intelligence and satellite products, participation in NATO command-and-control architectures, and export licensing controls over critical components and munitions into negotiating leverage.
Ahead of the Davos Forum, statements regarding a possible annexation of Greenland were reinforced by threats of trade pressure. The U.S. president stated that European countries that had deployed military personnel to the island as part of the Arctic Endurance exercises would face 10% import tariffs starting February 1, 2026, rising to 25% as of June 1, 2026.
At the same time, the White House moved to employ alternative, indirect instruments of influence aimed at constraining the full implementation of the EU–MERCOSUR partnership agreement.
The scale of the expected benefits for EU industrial economies itself heightened internal European conflict around the agreement, making it a convenient target for agricultural protectionism and Euroskeptic mobilization.
Trade between the EU and Latin America has a clearly asymmetric structure: Europe exports high-technology industrial goods to South American states while importing primarily raw materials and agricultural products. More than 30% of Latin American exports to the EU—worth €38.7 billion—consist of agricultural and food products.
Trade between the EU and the four MERCOSUR countries that are parties to the signed agreement is even more imbalanced, with agricultural and food products accounting for 43% of their exports to the EU.
This uneven trade structure is compounded by the internal economic heterogeneity of EU member states, generating divergences among European governments over the desirability of concluding a partnership agreement with MERCOSUR.
For EU countries dominated by industrial, automotive, and other export-oriented sectors, the agreement opens additional markets for high value-added products and strengthens their positions in global value chains.
These divergences turned the European Parliament vote into a clash of coalitions representing national interests, agricultural lobbies, and Euroskeptic parties, each with its own incentives to delay the agreement.
The U.S. factor manifested itself as an amplifier of polarization through the information environment and public signals of readiness to deploy trade and security leverage.
An additional multiplier of polarization was platform X (formerly Twitter), owned by Elon Musk, which within the European political cycle increasingly functions as a channel for scaling right-wing populist and mobilizational narratives.
The EU’s institutional response to this factor has already taken regulatory form. The European Commission increased procedural pressure on X, demanding internal documents related to changes in recommendation algorithms amid allegations of systemic bias toward the far right and risks to democratic processes.
Within this configuration, the campaign against implementation of the EU–MERCOSUR agreement gained a favorable information environment in which agricultural protectionism, sovereignty rhetoric, and distrust of supranational institutions are fused into a publicly acceptable rationale for procedural delay.
This strengthened the position of Euroskeptic parliamentarians, who required not a stable majority but a short window of legitimacy for delay instruments, including referral of the agreement to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
At the same time, for European countries in which agriculture and related employment play a systemic role, expanded access for Latin American agricultural products to the EU market is viewed as a threat to the competitiveness of domestic producers.
Even prior to the agreement, EU–MERCOSUR trade dynamics favored Germany, whose chancellor, Friedrich Merz, emerged as one of the leading advocates of signing and implementing the free trade agreement.
In 2024, EU countries exported €1 billion worth of passenger cars to Brazil—the largest market within MERCOSUR—70% of which were produced by the German automotive industry.
The removal of existing tariffs—up to 18% on auto parts and up to 35% on vehicles—will further integrate MERCOSUR into the European automotive market, as local demand for vehicles exceeds production capacity within the bloc.
By contrast, Austria, France, Hungary, Ireland, and Poland emerged as the main opponents of the agreement due to the structure of their economies.
Opposition is concentrated in states where agriculture and related employment carry significant political weight, allowing competition risks from South American producers to be readily translated into parliamentary mobilization and procedural barriers.
The administration in Washington had an interest in procedurally delaying implementation of the agreement and publicly signaled its readiness to use trade and security leverage in response to further EU autonomization.
At the same time, the outcome in the European Parliament was primarily determined by the internal configuration of national interests, agricultural lobbies, and Euroskeptic parties, which had their own motivations for referring the agreement to the CJEU.
Thanks to coordinated positions by the Patriots for Europe group—comprising, among others, Hungary’s Fidesz, France’s National Rally, and Austria’s Freedom Party—together with right-conservative Members of the European Parliament from the Europe of Sovereign Nations group, largely composed of representatives of Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The European Parliament succeeded in sending the agreement to the CJEU by a narrow margin.
In the January 21, 2026, vote, 334 MEPs supported the referral to the Court, while 324 members—predominantly from mainstream European political forces—voted against.
Although the United States succeeded in temporarily complicating the EU’s course toward expanding trade and economic cooperation with Latin American states, the policies of European countries and Canada aimed at strengthening their own political agency will persist.
Speeches by Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney at the Davos Economic Forum—emphasizing the need for Western states to form a political dynamic autonomous from the United States and self-sufficient economically, militarily, and energetically—laid the groundwork for a new political trajectory replacing the traditional U.S.-centric understanding of Atlanticism.
The gradual transformation of Europe into a center of power autonomous from the United States, initiated after Donald Trump’s inauguration, is becoming systemic and increasingly resistant to external correction.
During the initial months of the Republican term, this course pursued by Brussels, London, and Ottawa remained fragmented and insufficiently coordinated, manifesting largely as reactive responses to White House military-political and economic initiatives.
Following the escalation of the political conflict around Greenland, however, Europe’s political dynamics fundamentally altered the model of engagement with the United States.
The United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy—the core drivers of European political momentum—refused to join Donald Trump’s proposed “Peace Council,” while the EU’s official position rejected any expansion of that organization’s jurisdiction beyond conflict management in Gaza.
The U.S. president’s rhetoric ahead of the Davos summit and his statements during the forum also triggered a reassessment of EU–U.S. economic interaction.
On January 21, 2026, Bernd Lange, chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade, confirmed that EU lawmakers were suspending work on implementation of the EU–U.S. trade agreement due to the lack of alignment between European and American positions on Greenland’s status and the prospects for further cooperation.
U.S. military-political and trade actions that generated European public and political demand for strategic autonomy have also driven adjustments in the rhetoric of European right-conservative forces.
Although Euroskeptic politicians were among the factors contributing to the delay of the EU–MERCOSUR agreement through its referral to the CJEU, conservative parties are becoming increasingly integrated into the European political mainstream.
Amid risks to European agency and security, and as EU societies reassess Washington’s role within the democratic bloc, participation in shaping common European policy is increasingly outweighing the logic of systemic confrontation with EU institutions for right-conservative political forces.
Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s National Rally, called for the suspension of the trade agreement concluded with the United States the previous summer and concurred with the view that U.S. policy on Greenland is unacceptable.
Alice Weidel, co-leader of Alternative for Germany, who throughout 2025 actively cultivated ties between her party and the White House, has since accused the Trump team of violating a core element of its political agenda—namely, U.S. non-interference in the domestic politics of third countries.
Criticism of Washington was also joined by Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, whose public statements on the Russia–Ukraine war, Ukraine’s NATO membership, and the need to strengthen British defense capabilities had already, in 2025, become more aligned with the requirements of continental European security.
European conservatives’ inclination to demonstrate autonomous political positions reflects the declining political and electoral utility of maintaining the previous level of engagement with the U.S. administration.
Public support for White House policies by European parties is now perceived negatively even by a majority of conservative voters in the EU, many of whom view the updated U.S. approach as a challenge to Europe’s security and economic stability.
The White House’s systematic use of pressure on NATO allies as an instrument of foreign policy has slowed the growth in popularity of European right-conservative forces, which in 2024–2025 relied heavily on public demonstrations of ideological proximity to the Republican administration.
Continued escalation in Washington’s rhetoric and the further application of tariff and political pressure create risks of declining support for Euroskeptic parties ahead of election cycles in major European countries scheduled for 2027–2029.
Seeking to avoid this outcome, EU right-conservative forces are opting for greater distancing from White House positions or, at minimum, refraining from open support for U.S. initiatives in foreign policy areas where implementation directly contradicts Europe’s geopolitical interests.
Traditional European elites’ demonstration of readiness for a more autonomous and assertive foreign policy, together with the rhetorical shift among conservative parties, is establishing new coordination formats within the European political system and in EU relations with Ottawa and London.
A consensus is forming within European societies regarding assessments of the U.S. role and EU foreign policy, while EU institutions, the UK government, and Canadian leadership are synchronizing their actions and political messaging.
Statements by European and Canadian speakers at the Davos Forum publicly confirmed their countries’ intention to entrench a model in which Western allies increasingly formulate political and security decisions independently of automatic alignment with Washington, gradually moving away from the U.S.-centric version of Atlanticism that dominated previous decades.
The growing political agency of Europe and Canada is simultaneously combined with a willingness by European states to maintain pragmatic engagement with the United States.
Negotiations between Donald Trump and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, during which the parties laid the groundwork for a potential agreement on Greenland, indicate that European states may be prepared to accept an expanded U.S. military presence on the island and to create special conditions for U.S. capital participation in investment projects there.
However, even under such compromises, a return to the previous transatlantic model—in which Washington provided security to its Western partners in exchange for recognition of unconditional U.S. geopolitical leadership—will not occur in the short term.
European leaders have demonstrated their intent to transform the EU into a new center of power within the democratic bloc and have secured majority electoral support for these ambitions.
Abandoning this course would carry a high risk of public support erosion for governing political forces in the EU and would strengthen those opponents more forcefully advocating Europe’s “strategic autonomy.”
Traditional European elites take this risk into account and will therefore continue to maintain domestic political consensus around initiatives aimed at reinforcing an independent European political dynamic.
The intensification of Europe’s geopolitical momentum—supported by London and Ottawa and reinforced by shifts in European public opinion—demonstrates that unconditional U.S. leadership in the region is undergoing fundamental change and will increasingly be shaped through negotiation and reciprocal commitments rather than unilateral priority-setting by Washington.
Even if a compromise is reached on U.S. military and economic access to Greenland, the erosion of trust among allies has already been set in motion, conferring strategic advantages on the autocratic axis.
Beijing and Moscow benefit from the fragmentation of a unified Western decision-making framework, as Washington and Europe simultaneously slow joint defense programs, fragment technological ecosystems, and expend political capital on mutual containment rather than accelerating collective advantage over the autocratic axis.
Within this logic, Greenland—potentially a connective hub of the North Atlantic through large-scale military and technological projects that could have reinforced Western technological superiority and constrained autocratic expansion in the Arctic—has instead become a case that accelerated fragmentation among democratic allies.
