Trump Chickens Out on Greenland After Markets Flinch

Summary

Bulwark Takes – Trump Chickens Out on Greenland After Markets Flinch

Podcast: Bulwark Takes
Air date: January 22, 2026
Hosts: Sam Stein, Catherine Rampell
Guests/Quotes: Donald Trump (clip), Steven Mnuchin (clip)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Bulwark Takes centers on President Trump’s abrupt decision to backtrack on threatened tariffs and posturing around Greenland, following adverse reactions in the financial markets. Sam Stein and Catherine Rampell dissect what actually changed (very little, in substance), explore why the administration folds after market turmoil, and analyze the broader global implications for U.S. credibility and economic partnerships—especially after repeated cycles of self-made crises and dramatic ‘solutions.’

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Trump’s “Deal” on Greenland: Announcement & Reality (02:18–03:07)

• Trump’s statement: Trump claimed to have reached a “framework of a future deal” with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte regarding Greenland and the Arctic, implying a diplomatic breakthrough.
• In reality, both hosts agree that this is mostly smoke and mirrors—just parroting existing arrangements and backing down from self-imposed threats.
• Catherine: “It's definitely not chess or board games of any kind. ... I mean, if you look at markets the last few days, they should have chastened this administration.” [03:07]

2. Markets Force a Retreat (03:08–05:38)

• Discussion focuses on how the threat of tariffs and potential Greenland invasion spooked global markets.
• Scandinavian pension funds dumping U.S. Treasuries, spike in bond yields, and volatility forced the administration into a hastily declared “deal.”
• Sam: “Maybe it's the Occam's razor. ... He saw the market reaction. He knew what he was doing was making people uncomfortable.” [04:50]
• Catherine (on Trump’s patterns): “He’s the arsonist who wants praise for his firefighting skills.” [05:02]

3. Status Quo: Security in the Arctic & NATO Relations (05:38–07:11, 07:11–07:49)

• The hosts read out NATO’s official response, which essentially reiterates the pre-existing multinational Arctic security framework.
• Sam: “All those things were in effect prior to this latest episode. Now, according to NATO, essentially that's still in effect. ... This is the spokesperson statement.” [05:38]
• Trump (clip, on CBS): “We have a concept of a deal. I think it's going to be a very good deal for the United States, also for them. ... Has to do with security. Great security, strong security and other things.” [07:11–07:28]

4. Market Realities and Risks of ‘Taco’ Diplomacy (07:49–09:24)

• The hosts muse about how markets keep getting “suckered” into Trump’s cycles, yet remain a real check on his actions.
• Catherine: “We are not a serious country. ... The markets did react, right?... And it seems like that initial decline is maybe, as we've said, what got Trump to back down.” [07:53]

5. Real-World Consequences: Credibility, Economics, and Allies (09:24–11:37)

• Beyond immediate market jitters, the cycle of Trump-fueled drama leaves “residual damage,” eroding trust and incentivizing allies to look elsewhere (including China) for stability.
• Allies increasingly view the U.S. as an “unreliable partner” with “an erratic leader.”
• Catherine: “On paper, it looks like nothing has changed, but in reality, we have done perhaps irreparable damage to our relationship with our allies... Also irreparable economic damage with these other countries.” [09:24]
• Parade of allied leaders now seeking “relationship repairs” with China due to U.S. unpredictability.

6. Dismissing Allies: Mnuchin and the Denmark “Irrelevant” Comment (11:37–14:11)

• Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin publicly mocks Denmark’s significance as an investor in U.S. Treasuries:
  Steven Mnuchin (clip): “Denmark's investment in U.S. treasury bonds, like Denmark itself, is irrelevant. ... They've been selling Treasuries for years. I'm not concerned at all.” [12:01]
• Rampell counters severely, warning that this attitude only raises the risks and costs for any foreign company considering long-term investment in the U.S.
• Catherine: “Why would you go forward and make that long term investment? ... You might lose a lot of money in the process. ... We’ve basically put on a lot more risk for these other countries.” [13:00]

7. Long-Term Instability and Final Thoughts (14:11–14:49)

• Trump’s repeated, erratic swings on Greenland signal ongoing instability, undermining U.S. credibility.
• Catherine (on ‘irrelevant Denmark’ remarks): “I would say the market suggests it's pretty relevant.” [14:35]
• Sam: “I continue to believe that the markets are a real check on Trump... In this case, I do believe that it got him to taco, or whatever you want to call it.” [14:49]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “He's the arsonist who wants praise for his firefighting skills.”
  — Catherine Rampell (05:02)
• “We are not a serious country.”
  — Catherine Rampell (07:53)
• "Denmark's investment in U.S. treasury bonds, like Denmark itself, is irrelevant."
  — Steven Mnuchin (12:01)
• “On paper, it looks like nothing has changed, but in reality, we have done perhaps irreparable damage to our relationship with our allies... and also irreparable economic damage.”
  — Catherine Rampell (09:24)
• “I would say the market suggests it's pretty relevant.”
  — Catherine Rampell (14:35)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–01:40 — [Ads/Intro skipped]
• 01:40–03:07 — Trump’s “arrangement” with NATO on Greenland
• 03:07–05:38 — Market panic and consequences; Trump’s pattern of stirring and then soothing crises
• 05:38–07:49 — NATO’s response and status quo Arctic security
• 07:49–09:24 — Market reactions and risks of cyclical Trump “crises”
• 09:24–11:37 — Deeper damage to U.S. alliances and rise of China as fallback partner
• 11:37–14:11 — Treasury Secretary’s “irrelevant Denmark” remarks and implications for foreign investment
• 14:11–14:49 — Ongoing instability and final commentary

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Episode Tone & Takeaway

The tone is sardonic, brisk, and cynical about the seriousness of both the Trump administration and the U.S. approach to international partners. Rampell and Stein repeatedly stress the “cycle of drama” and its accumulating consequences for America’s reputation, directly quoting officials to underline how market and diplomatic realities are at odds with self-congratulatory announcements.

Bottom Line:
Trump's "deal" around Greenland is a walk-back, not a breakthrough, prompted by market backlash rather than actual negotiation. The United States’ erratic behavior breeds mistrust and pushes even allies toward competitors like China. Meanwhile, market reactions remain the one thing truly capable of checking these cycles—at least in the short run.

Transcript

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[Catherine Rampell]

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[Andy]

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[Sam Stein]

Hello everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, joined by Kathryn Rampel for yet another Greenland edition of A Bulwark Take. At least this time we have real, tangible news. I suppose it's.

[Catherine Rampell]

I hope so.

[Sam Stein]

Be honest. I think so. It's kind of what I expected. Kind of what everyone, I think, probably should have expected. You can call it a taco. You can call out of the deal. You can find yourself somewhere in the middle. But Trump has decided that we've hit some sort of arrangement that's satisfactory to him.

[Catherine Rampell]

Concepts of an arrangement.

[Sam Stein]

I should have. I should have.

[Catherine Rampell]

Concepts of a deal. Yeah, that's his wording, not mine.

[Sam Stein]

I'll read the truth and then I'll let Catherine give us the real truth. Here it is, based upon a very productive meeting I have had with Secretary General of NATO, Mark Root. We have formed the framework of a future deal. I don't know what that actually means with respect to Greenland and in fact, the entire Arctic region. The solution, if consummated, will be a great one for the United States of America and all NATO nations. Based upon this understanding, I will not be imposing the tariffs or schedules going to effect on February 1st. Additional discussions are being held concerning the Golden Dome as it pertains to Greenland. Further information will be made available as discussions progress. Yada yada, yada. All right, all right. We end up basically, I think where we started. We'll get to the NATO statement in a second because that does sort of confirm we're in a status quo. But Catherine, is this Taco or is this like five dimensional chess?

[Catherine Rampell]

It's definitely not chess or board games of any kind. I guess it's taco. I mean, if you look at markets the last few days, they should have chastened this administration. Both bond markets, like bond prices skyrocketing. You know, Trump was trying to not that long ago get mortgage rates down by buying mortgage backed securities. And he briefly succeeded in doing that a little tiny bit and then completely lost all of that when bond markets flipped out. And that happened because of these threatened tariffs, because of the increasing riskiness perceived a real of investing in US Assets. And like a Danish pension fund dumping Treasuries. And I think there was what, a Swedish pension fund, also one of the other Scandinavians dumping Treasuries.

[Sam Stein]

One of those.

[Catherine Rampell]

Yeah, one of those. But all of that means that if people don't want to buy US denominated assets anymore, including our Treasuries, interest rates go up. All of which is to say that like there was a, a Sell America trade that seemed to be happening in direct response to the insanity of Donald Trump threatening to invade Greenland and tariff anybody who didn't like that. So that should have chastened them. Did it? I don't know. I wish. Well, Trump backed off. Why did he back off? I don't, we don't know. Obviously.

[Sam Stein]

Maybe it's the Occam's razor. That's gotta be Occam's razor. He saw it. He saw the market reaction. He knew what he was doing was making people uncomfortable. Or maybe this is just what he does.

[Catherine Rampell]

Yeah, I have no idea. I mean, maybe he set a fire so that he could put it out and be be praised for his firefighting skills. You know, that's the always the deal with Donald Trump, that he's the arsonist who wants praise for his firefighting skills. And so maybe this was all about like creating some drama so that he could swoop in and save the day. It's really hard to impose any kind of logic or strategy on anything that this president does, even when he belatedly makes the correct decision and tries to undo some, some of the damage.

[Sam Stein]

All right, so let's, let's get out of the realm of psychoanalysis and into the realm of fact. Okay, so the US has and has always had the option of increasing our military footprint on Greenland. We have access to bases. We have worked in cooperation with our NATO allies in and around Greenland. We have Arctic security measures already in place with respect to Greenland. Had Russia or China made a claim on Greenland, it would have prompted a multilateral response involving the United States. So all those things were in effect prior to this latest episode. Now, according to Naito, essentially that's still in effect. This is the, this is the spokesperson statement. Following the announcement of a concept of a deal, the Secretary General had a very productive meeting with President Trump during which they discussed the critical significance of security in the Arctic region to all allies, including the United States. Discussions among NATO allies on the framework the President referenced will focus on here we. Ensuring Arctic security through the collective efforts of allies, especially the seven Arctic allies. Negotiations between Denmark, Greenland and the United States will go forward aimed at ensuring that Russia and China never gain a foothold economically or militarily in Greenland. So that's basically reads to me, status quo, like we are. What is in existence will remain in existence. And we've reached some sort of understanding to de. Escalate. So that's that. And yet here we have Trump and, you know, kind of gets the idea of like, yeah, maybe the markets did spook him. But let's play the first clip around concepts of a deal.

[Donald Trump]

Well, we have a concept of a deal. I think it's going to be a very good deal for the United States, also for them. And we're going to work together on something having to do with the Arctic as a whole, but also Greenland. And it has to do with the security. Great security, strong security and other things.

[James]

Things the market. 600 points. Getting back a lot of some of the nervousness we had in the last couple of days. The tariffs are off. Nothing happens on February 1st.

[Donald Trump]

No, we took that off because it looks like we have pretty much a.

[James]

Concept of a deal, a deal of ownership, a deal.

[Donald Trump]

Well, it's a little bit complex, but we'll explain it down the line.

[Sam Stein]

How do they get so sucked? How do the markets get suckered into this shit?

[Catherine Rampell]

I don't know. We are not a serious country. And. Well, when you say, how do the markets get suckered into this? So the markets did react, right? They did react earlier this week. That's what we were saying. Like, you look at bond price, or, excuse me, bond rates, interest rates, they did go up. If you look at the stock market, it did go way down yesterday. I think it was yesterday, right? I don't know.

[Sam Stein]

Yesterday.

[Catherine Rampell]

Earlier, yes, yesterday. What is time? And, yeah, they've recovered somewhat today, but they still went down yesterday. And it seems like that initial decline is maybe, as we've said, what got Trump to back down. So, I don't know, I mean, I guess the markets were relatively rational there. Somebody probably made a lot of money if they were doing the taco trade. Yeah, exactly. If they were doing the taco trade, you know, they would have made a lot of money.

[Sam Stein]

But it's really just like a poly market trade. Right. Like, maybe they had some sort of prop bet on, you know, would we annex Greenland? Will he invade them or not? Yeah, but there is real term damage here, I guess. So, like, you know, we're all we're talking about. This is sort of like a classic Trump cycle, where you create a problem, you solve the problem, you get credit for the problem, then you create another problem. But like, there are longer term ramifications to this. It's not like nothing happens on the side or residually from it. What are the actual, I guess, economic but also political ramifications from these types of episodes that ultimately end up somewhat in the same place?

[Catherine Rampell]

Yeah, it's terrible. Right On. The best case scenario is like Donald Trump is repackaging the status quo as a victory, which is essentially what's happening here. Right. His concepts of a deal, his concepts of a framework of a deal, whatever it is, to get us back to exactly where we were. On paper, it looks like nothing has changed, but in reality, we have done perhaps irreparable damage to our relationship with our allies, not just our national security relationship with our allies, who might be even more skittish than they might have been before about sharing intelligence with us, for example, but also irreparable economic damage with these other countries. Sure, this time we didn't end up putting another round of tariffs on these other countries, and they didn't end up pulling the bazooka, which was their retaliatory option, which would have been devastating both for the US and for probably the global economy. But we have again proved that we are an unreliable partner. We have an erratic leader who doesn't seem to have any objectives, any strategic objectives in anything that he does, whether it's about national security or economics. And so they're looking for friends elsewhere as I wrote in a recent newsletter there has been a parade of foreign leaders, leaders of our allies who have been going to China lately, basically to repair their relationships with President Xi Jinping and the Chinese, the rest of the Chinese government, because China is now viewed in many ways as a more stable, authoritarian counterparty than the United States is under Donald Trump. The South Korean president just had his first visit in years. The Canadian Prime Minister, the British PM is heading that way as well. They're all going there because of shit like this where we blow things up repeatedly only to maybe reset things to where they were a few weeks beforehand and meanwhile destroy any sense of trust we have with our friends.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, let's just stick on that for a second. So the thing that happened yesterday with Scott Besant dealt specifically with Denmark and we'll put this video in, but he basically just goes off on Denmark, calls him irrelevant. Let's watch.

[James]

How concerned are you that institutional investors in Europe may be pulling out of Treasuries, such as from pension funds in Denmark and elsewhere?

[Steven Mnuchin]

Well, the size Denmark's investment in U.S. treasury bonds, like Denmark itself, is irrelevant. That it was less than $100 million. They've been selling Treasuries for years. I'm not concerned at all.

[Sam Stein]

So here you have the Treasury Secretary dismissing, mocking, in effect, a NATO ally that actually does matter in tangible ways. If you're Denmark, if you're the economic minister or you're in the government there, what incentive is there now to do anything respectively with the United States on economics at all? I mean, yes, it's a huge market. I'm not going to.

[Catherine Rampell]

It's a huge market.

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[Catherine Rampell]

And Novo Nordisk is a Danish company that makes Ozempic and wegovy, which are big blockbuster drugs that sell very well in our market and have kept the Danish economy afloat. So that's all true regardless of what Donald Trump does. But if you're talking about, I don't know, if you're a Danish company and you're thinking about making a long term investment, let's say you're Novo Nordisk for that matter, you're thinking about making a long term investment in a factory in the United States or other, some other kind of economic or financial corporate partnership in the United States and you're not sure if we have rule of law, you're not sure what the regulatory regime is going to look like, if there are going to be, you know, more erratic, sudden tariffs that are put in place or, or import bans or anything else. Why would you go Forward and, and make that long term investment. You know, you have to weigh both the risks, you know, the upside risks and the downside risks. Like on the one hand, yeah, you get access to Americans who need your drugs, for example, but on the other hand, you're going to put yourself through hell trying to figure out whether you can continue to operate there. You might lose a lot of money in the process. You might have your workers for that matter rounded up, as happened with Hyundai South Korean company here in the United States. So we've, we've basically put on a lot more risk on these other countries who. Yeah, Donald Trump is right. They want access to our economy, but not at any cost.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, I think that's the big problem. And it's so erratic. I mean, we're talking now he's backed off Greenland, but I think we kind of forget that this is not the first time he's, you know, had dalliance with invading Greenland. This happened earlier in his term and he came back to it. And so there's no real sense of stability or the idea. This is the final chapter in this. So we shall see. Any last thoughts before I let you go?

[Catherine Rampell]

I guess just on that Scott Besant video, he says that Denmark is irrelevant and the sell off from a Danish pension fund of US Treasuries is irrelevant. I would say the market suggests it's pretty relevant.

[Sam Stein]

No, fair enough. I continue to believe that the markets are real check on Trump that he one of the few things he does actually know and respond to and cares about and it's interesting to see what motivates him. And in this case, I do believe that it got him to taco, or whatever you want to call it. All right, Catherine, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Everyone should be reading Catherine and receipts. She's got a great newsletter coming out tomorrow. I know this because I know the, I know what the idea is behind it. Not going to give too much away and you should subscribe to this feed where you get bulwark ticks. Thank you for watching. Talk to you soon.

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