00:00We'll start with that U-turn by the U.S. President just announced we are reacting, of course, immediately here at France 24 after an incendiary speech at Davos where he threw his weight around with a sequence of half-truths and insults aimed at the rest of the world, especially Europe and NATO over Greenland.
00:16It's been announced in the past few minutes that Donald Trump has dropped his threat to impose tariffs on a number of nations, including France, for their stance on Greenland, saying he'd reached the outlines of a deal with NATO on Greenland's future.
00:33What does this mean? Let's bring in Fraser Jackson, our Washington correspondent, to get his insight on the situation. Fraser, what can you tell us?
00:40Sorry, Mark, I'm still trying to work sources at the moment. As you can imagine, this is all breaking in the last couple of minutes.
00:47It is a difficult one, isn't it? I mean, obviously, with what Trump said at Davos, all very difficult, sort of his attitude was saying one thing, but now it appears something has changed.
00:59Yeah, it certainly does. We got this tweet from Donald Trump within the last 30 minutes that we can bring up for you now that says,
01:04Based upon a very productive meeting that I have had with the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutter, we have formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic region.
01:15I think that is important, and I'll tell you why in a moment.
01:18He continues, this solution, if consummated, will be a great one for the United States of America and all NATO nations.
01:25Based upon this understanding, I will not be imposing the tariffs that were scheduled to go into effect on February 1st.
01:31Additional discussions are being held concerning the Golden Dome as it pertains to Greenland.
01:35Now, I think this is interesting here because it looks really that Donald Trump was looking for an off-ramp here.
01:41He knows that this has been remarkably unpopular on Capitol Hill.
01:46A lot of senators on the Republican side were not on board with any kind of strike on Greenland,
01:51and Donald Trump took the idea of taking Greenland by force off the table at that speech in Davos just a few hours ago.
01:58But now he seemingly has reversed course and said that these tariffs will not be going into effect on February 1st.
02:04Reading between the lines, it appears that Donald Trump is going for what the Europeans here are offering,
02:10which is effectively a beefing up of the security situation within Greenland.
02:15And, of course, Donald Trump is also worried about, as he said there, the rest of the entire Arctic region.
02:20That, of course, includes Canada as well.
02:23So it is likely we will see some movement on that in the future.
02:27But, effectively, the Europeans here have floated the idea of sending more resources to Greenland,
02:34sending more troops, and likely getting more American boots on the ground in Greenland as well.
02:39Remember, over the course of the last 40 or 50 years,
02:42at one point the U.S. had around 18,000 troops in Greenland during the Cold War,
02:48and well over a dozen bases there, that is down to one base, the space base,
02:53which monitors a lot of those missiles that the U.S. is worried about,
02:57which would head to the continental United States from Russia if they were to be fired.
03:02So that is something that the U.S. could now look at,
03:04potentially increasing its footprint on Greenland through more troops and more bases.
03:09So the actual details, though, from the U.S. administration thin on the ground.
03:13We are working on trying to get those to our viewers.
03:17But reading between the lines, it appears that is what has been discussed here with NATO.
03:21Fraser, thank you for that update.
03:23And clearly it is a fast-developing situation.
03:26We know we can count on you for further updates throughout the night.
03:28Fraser Jackson in Washington.
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