Trump’s turnabout on Greenland shows limits of his coercive powers

New York Times: But this week Mr. Trump also discovered the limits of his coercive powers. After he threatened a wave of new tariffs, markets fell abruptly, which always seizes his attention. Allies objected, this time openly. And by the time the president returned to Washington on Thursday night, it was clear that he had left considerable damage to the Western alliance in his wake.

When the climb-down came, it was with only the vaguest explanation from the president.

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When pressed about how the new arrangement would expand America’s right beyond an existing 1951 treaty — which gives the United States almost unlimited rights to base troops, missiles, aircraft and the U.S. Navy on Greenland — he described it as “a much more generous deal.”…