The Daily Populous Wednesday January 21st, 2026 evening edition
Authored by nbcnews.com and submitted by nbcnews

The European Union's legislative body on Wednesday halted work on the formal approval and implementation of the trade deal it reached last summer with President Donald Trump.

"Given the continued and escalating threats, including tariff threats, against Greenland and Denmark, and their European allies, we have been left with no alternative but to suspend work" on the deal, said Bernd Lange, the chairman of the European Parliament's international trade committee.

"Until the US decides to re-engage on a path of cooperation rather than confrontation," no steps to move the deal forward would be taken, Lange said in a statement.

"Our sovereignty and territorial integrity are at stake," he added in a post on X. "Business as usual impossible."

The announcement came after Trump on Saturday said he would hit seven European Union countries, plus the U.K., with tariffs if they did not allow the United States to control Greenland.

The E.U. trade deal was reached in July during a visit by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to Trump's golf club in Turnberry, Scotland.

President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen after reaching a trade deal in Turnberry, Scotland, on July 27, 2025. Jacquelyn Martin / AP

The core of the deal was a cap on U.S. tariffs applied to most imports from the E.U. at 15%. The rate was among the lowest set for any trading partner last year.

Some imports from the E.U., such as generic pharmaceuticals, would have had all tariffs removed.

In exchange for the lower tariff rate, the European Union, America's largest trading partner, would have lowered tariffs on some goods it imports from the United States. This would have helped American agricultural and industrial companies sell products into the 27-country bloc.

The total trading relationship between the U.S. and E.U. was worth $1.5 trillion in goods and services annually as of 2024. The U.S. imports more than $600 billion in goods from the bloc each year on average, while Europeans buy more than $360 billion of U.S. goods, according to data from the U.S. Trade Representative.

When the so-called Turnberry deal was first announced, the European Commission hailed its potential, saying it "restores stability and predictability."

But all that changed with Trump's Saturday tariff threat.

"In politics as in business, a deal is a deal" Von der Leyen said on Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "When friends shake hands, it must mean something."

During his own Davos speech, Trump said that the U.S. would not use force to seize Greenland. But he did not take his threat of a 10% tariff starting Feb. 1 off the table.

Lange, the E.U. trade official, held a press conference following Trump's speech and called the president's assurances about force in Greenland "a small positive element."

Nonetheless, Lange said, "it's totally clear that with this 10%-25% [tariffs] pressure, he is really getting into a new quality of relation."

As long as Trump's tariff threat remains in place, "There will be no possibility for compromise" Lange said.

On Thursday, leaders of the 27 E.U. countries will meet to discuss their coordinated response to Trump's Greenland threats.

This may include a package of retaliatory tariffs worth nearly $110 billion, which would impact a wide range of U.S. exports, from Boeing airplanes to soybeans to Kentucky bourbon.

Another potential retaliatory measure would be to deploy the bloc's "Anti-Coercion Instrument," a policy option sometimes referred to as the E.U.'s trade "bazooka."

The ACI would allow the European Commission to target nearly any U.S. goods or services in Europe with a wide range of restrictions and barriers.

These could include investment restrictions, the lifting of intellectual property protections for American companies, the suspension of business licenses, and outright bans on market access to the Eurozone.

Originally proposed in 2021 to give the E.U. a powerful set of tools to counter potential Chinese economic coercion, the trade bazooka has never been deployed before.

On Wednesday, Lange said he was in favor of putting the bazooka into use.

Open_Management7430 on January 21st, 2026 at 17:29 UTC »

Trump is completely deranged. Appeasement and diplomacy have failed spectacularly and its time for Europe to treat the US as a hostile power.

SirDoritos1 on January 21st, 2026 at 15:42 UTC »

An unstable toddler? Causing chaos? Who knew! I’m floored, what a shocker!/S.

As a European, I think all future trade deal talks should be put on hold until the U.S. figures out its own political chaos. Right now, it’s like watching a teenager who still can’t get anything right.

nbcnews on January 21st, 2026 at 15:28 UTC »

The announcement came after Trump on Saturday said he would hit seven European Union countries, plus the U.K., with tariffs if they did not allow the United States to control Greenland.

The E.U. trade deal was reached in July during a visit by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to Trump's golf club in Turnberry, Scotland.

The core of the deal was a cap on U.S. tariffs applied to most imports from the E.U. at just 15%. The rate was among the lowest received by any trading partner last year.