NextFin News - In a sharp departure from traditional diplomatic decorum, former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen urged European leaders on Tuesday to launch a robust economic counter-offensive against the United States. Speaking as global elites gathered for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Rasmussen declared that the era of attempting to appease U.S. President Trump through "flattery" has reached its end, asserting that the current administration in Washington respects only "force and power."
The call for retaliation comes as U.S. President Trump intensifies a multi-front trade offensive. On Monday, the U.S. President threatened to impose 200 percent tariffs on French wine and Champagne if President Emmanuel Macron refused to join a newly proposed U.S.-led "Board of Peace" for Gaza. Simultaneously, the administration has signaled it will use 10 to 25 percent tariffs on European goods as leverage to force Denmark into negotiations over the acquisition of Greenland. According to HotNews.ro, Rasmussen’s intervention reflects a growing consensus among European security and economic architects that the transatlantic relationship has entered a state of "rupture" rather than mere friction.
The escalation at Davos has been palpable. While U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick defended the administration’s "America First" policy as a necessary correction to failed globalization, European officials have begun to use increasingly combative language. French Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard described the wine tariff threats as "blackmail," while Macron himself hinted at the World Economic Forum that Europe might be forced to deploy its "trade bazooka"—the anti-coercion instrument designed to penalize nations that use trade as a political weapon. According to The New York Times, the market fallout has already begun, with U.S. stocks and the dollar slipping as investors weigh the risks of a full-scale trade war between the world’s two largest economic blocs.
Rasmussen’s stance is rooted in a calculated assessment of the U.S. President’s negotiation style. By framing the Greenland pursuit and the Gaza board as non-negotiable national security interests, the U.S. President has effectively bypassed traditional NATO and WTO frameworks. Rasmussen argues that if Europe does not respond with equivalent economic pain, it risks becoming "subservient" to a transactional foreign policy that views allies as targets for extraction. This is not merely a dispute over commodities like wine or territory like Greenland; it is a fundamental challenge to the sovereignty of European states.
The economic data supporting a potential European retaliation is significant. The European Union remains the largest foreign investor in the United States, supporting millions of American jobs. However, the U.S. administration, led by Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, appears to believe that the U.S. holds the superior hand. Bessent recently dismissed concerns regarding European leverage, suggesting that the EU has no meaningful financial mechanism to deter U.S. policy. This disconnect in perceived leverage suggests that a "tit-for-tat" cycle, as Lutnick described it, is not only likely but perhaps inevitable in the coming months.
Looking forward, the trend points toward a fragmentation of the Western alliance into competing economic fortresses. If the U.S. President follows through on the 200 percent wine tariffs or the Greenland-related levies, the European Commission is expected to target iconic American industries, including tech giants and agricultural exports from politically sensitive U.S. states. Rasmussen’s warning serves as a harbinger of a new geopolitical reality: a world where the "rules-based order" is replaced by a raw exercise of market power. As the U.S. President prepares to arrive in Davos, the message from Europe’s former security chief is clear: the time for talk is over, and the era of economic combat has begun.
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