A major Danish pension fund is divesting from US government debt, citing unsustainable American finances and President Donald Trump’s push to acquire Greenland as key reasons. 

AkademikerPension, which manages around $25 billion in savings for academics, will sell off its roughly $100 million in US Treasuries by the end of the month, Chief Investment Officer Anders Schelde told Bloomberg on Tuesday.

“The US is basically not a good credit and long-term the US government finances are not sustainable,” Schelde said. He attributed the decision to concerns about US fiscal discipline, a weaker dollar, and credit risks created by Trump’s policies. Schelde specifically cited Trump’s repeated talk of taking over Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, as a factor.

AkademikerPension is the latest Danish pension fund to retreat from US debt. Laerernes Pension slashed its Treasury exposure before the recent Greenland flare-up, citing US debt sustainability concerns and threats to Federal Reserve independence. PFA and Paedagogernes Pension have also recently reduced holdings or halted new US-focused strategies, according to financial reports.

The divestments come amid a deepening rift between Washington and European capitals over Trump’s foreign policy, including threats to impose tariffs on allies over their opposition to a US takeover of Greenland. 

The Danish Defense Intelligence Service recently also described the US for the first time as a potential security risk, citing Washington’s willingness to use its “economic and technological strength as a tool of power, also toward allies and partners.” Thousands of Danes and Greenlanders have also been actively protesting Trump’s threats in Copenhagen.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, however, has urged calm and dismissed suggestions that Europe would dump Treasuries. “Sit back, take a deep breath, do not retaliate,” Bessent said at Davos on Tuesday, urging US allies to “have an open mind” and to honor their trade agreements.

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The EU is becoming increasingly dependent on American natural gas, which is set to account for nearly half of the bloc’s supply by 2030, a shift that risks creating a major vulnerability as relations with Washington deteriorate, Politico has reported.   

The bloc’s increasing reliance on US-sourced supplies follows a gradual phasing out of pipeline gas from Russia, once the biggest supplier, following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022 and ensuing Western sanctions.  

The US already supplies about a quarter of the EU’s gas imports, a share expected to rise sharply as the bloc phases in a total ban on Russian gas, according to Politico. This trend has created a “potentially high-risk new geopolitical dependency,” Ana Maria Jaller-Makarewicz, lead energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told the outlet.  

“An over-reliance on US gas contradicts the [EU policy] of enhancing EU energy security through diversification, demand reduction and boosting renewables supply,” she said.  

Alarm over the vulnerability is growing among EU member states. Diplomats warn that the Trump administration could seek to exploit Europe’s rising dependence on US gas for foreign policy gain.  

While “there are other sources of gas in the world” beyond the US, the risk that US President Donald Trump could cut supplies to the EU after an incursion in Greenland “should be taken into account,” an anonymous senior EU diplomat told Politico.   

Trump has increasingly used energy as leverage in trade talks with the EU. Under a deal announced last July, the bloc agreed to buy $750 billion worth of US energy by 2028 to avert higher tariffs, a pledge critics have branded coercive.  

The development comes as Trump has openly floated seizing Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, a notion that has unnerved European NATO members and pushed EU-US relations toward a crisis, the outlet said.  

Tensions escalated further after Trump announced new tariffs on European NATO countries including France, Denmark, Germany and the UK unless a deal is struck to sell Greenland to the US, prompting calls within the EU for tough retaliatory trade measures.   

Meanwhile, the sharp fall in cheaper Russian pipeline gas imports after 2022 has had the effect of driving wholesale prices and living costs higher, while undermining industrial competitiveness.

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US President Donald Trump has shared what he claimed was a private message from his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron.

The text, posted to Trump’s Truth Social account, showed the French leader expressing confusion over US objectives regarding Greenland, offering to host a G7 meeting in Paris with participation by Ukraine, Denmark, Syria, and Russia, and requesting a dinner with the US president.

“I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland,” the note read. “Let us have a dinner together in Paris together [sic] on thursday before you go back to the us,” it added.

The disclosure follows a public clash between Trump and Macron over the US-proposed ‘Gaza Board of Peace’, which France declined to join. The panel, to be chaired by Trump, is intended to oversee the transition in the war-torn Palestinian enclave. Paris said it refused because the board’s charter “extends beyond Gaza and therefore exceeds the scope of the peace plan endorsed by the United Nations.”

Trump responded by saying “nobody wants” Macron on the council because his presidential term is ending soon and suggested France could be coerced into joining with trade tariffs. The board is set to be formally launched with a charter-signing ceremony on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos later this week.

The annual gathering of global elites is expected to be dominated by the ongoing dispute between the US and Western European nations resisting Trump’s push to acquire Greenland from Denmark. Trump has announced fresh tariffs on eight European NATO countries and suggested they should focus more on the Ukraine conflict instead.

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The EU is considering new tariffs on US imports or restricting the access of American companies to the bloc’s market in response to President Donald Trump’s threat to annex Greenland, the Financial Times reported on Monday.

The US president has long sought control over Denmark’s overseas territory, citing concerns over the influence of Russia and China in the strategic region. On Saturday, he threatened to impose a new 10% tariff on a number of NATO members, including Denmark, starting in February, and increase it to 25% on June 1 if a deal is not reached.

According to the FT, European diplomats discussed over the weekend the reactivation of tariffs worth nearly $110 billion that were previously suspended until February 6. An EU diplomat told the newspaper that the bloc prefers a carrot-and-stick approach aimed at restraining Trump while avoiding a rupture of NATO.

“There are clear retaliation instruments at hand if this continues… [Trump’s] using pure mafioso methods,” a diplomat said, adding that the bloc wants to call for calm and give Trump “an opportunity to climb down the ladder.”

Bloomberg reported that the EU could also retaliate by attempting to sell the trillions of dollars it holds in US bonds and stocks. The outlet noted, however, that the majority of these assets are held by private funds outside the control of the government, and the sale would also hurt European investors.

Denmark has deployed troops to Greenland as part of the Arctic Endurance drill launched in response to Trump’s threats, while European politicians have warned that a US attack on a fellow NATO member would destroy the bloc.

Trump previously said he may have to acquire Greenland “the hard way,” and has refused to rule out the use of force.

NATO chief Mark Rutte, who spoke with Trump over the phone over the weekend, said member states are ready to address the president’s concerns over Greenland’s security.

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A senior Ukrainian lawmaker has responded to advice from one of Kiev’s main creditors, arguing that “roaring like a lion” doesn’t help with keeping warm in a freezing parliament.

The comment was a response to IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, who said on Tuesday on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos that phasing out electricity and heating subsidies remains a key condition for Kiev to receive additional funding. She told Ukrainians: “you have to believe in yourself, as a lion. So, get up in the morning and go ‘roaaarr.’”

The Ukrainian capital is in the midst of a severe electricity crisis and widespread heating outages, which have also affected the parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, as freezing temperatures grip Kiev.

MP Daniil Getmantsev, who is the chairman of the parliamentary tax committee, took to social media on Wednesday to report on conditions in the parliament: “There is water. There is no heat. I tried ‘roaring like a lion.’ It didn’t help much.”

The Washington-based institution has disbursed just under $10 billion to Ukraine under a $15.5 billion loan program which ends next year. In November, the IMF and Kiev reached an agreement on a new $8.1 billion package. At the time, the government pledged to tackle corruption, tighten fiscal discipline, and push ahead with politically sensitive reforms, including cutting energy subsidies.

During last week’s meeting with Georgieva in Kiev, Vladimir Zelensky highlighted the harsh winter weather and power outages, while thanking her for support. The chair of the parliamentary Budget Committee, Roksolana Pidlasa, later called some IMF requirements “contentious.”

Former MP Igor Markov told Russian media on Tuesday that the IMF’s demand would make Ukrainian cities unliveable, forcing people into the countryside.

Ukraine is ranked among Europe’s poorest countries, and subsidies for electricity, heating, and gas have long sustained households.

Power outages in Kiev follow waves of Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Moscow has said it targeted drone production facilities, energy infrastructure, and other military related sites in response to Ukrainian strikes on Russian power facilities and indiscriminate attacks on civilians.

Britain has effectively been evading its own ban on Russian oil by using a loophole to import millions of barrels of the sanctioned commodity in the form of fuel processed in third countries, Politico reported on Tuesday.

Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, UK authorities have banned the import of Russian crude and oil products, along with related maritime transportation, insurance, and financing. Britain has also imposed asset freezes on Russian oil majors, including Rosneft and Lukoil, and joined the enforcement of the G7 price cap on Russian crude.

Moscow maintains that the “unprecedented number of sanctions” introduced by the West against the Russian oil sector in an effort to curb the country’s energy revenues “has had no effect.”

The UK, however, imported some £4 billion ($5.36 billion) of jet fuel and other petroleum products refined in India and Türkiye between 2022 and the end of 2025, according to a recent report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), as cited by Politico. The study estimated that at least £1.6 billion ($2.15 billion) worth of the products imported from Indian and Turkish refineries would have been made with Russian oil.

India and Türkiye, which along with China have been ranked among the top buyers of Russian oil after Western nations imposed bans, are refining sanctioned crude into jet fuel and diesel and then re-selling it to countries across the world, analysts noted.   

“Roughly one in six jet fuel shipments entering the UK comes from refineries running on Russian crude,” Isaac Levi, an analyst at CREA, told Politico.

Industry experts have long warned that sanctions on refined fuels are hard to enforce because the origin of the crude cannot be traced once processed. Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden said in 2022 that no system exists to determine whether such products originate from Russian oil.

Earlier this month, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced plans to continue efforts to curb Moscow’s energy revenues in 2026, including by targeting oil traders and a ‘shadow fleet’ that he claimed is used to transport Russian crude.

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French President Emmanuel Macron swaggered into Davos ready to defend the EU from an emboldened and aggressive US. As anyone who’s been watching him knows, Macron’s fighting words rarely translate into policy. This week in Switzerland was no exception.

Macron took the podium at the World Economic Forum’s flagship event on Tuesday, eyes concealed behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses, and accused US President Donald Trump of trying to “weaken and subordinate Europe” through tariffs and lopsided trade deals.

His warning: Europeans “should not hesitate to deploy” the tools at their disposal.

After sending a handful of troops to Greenland last week – reportedly to discourage a potential US invasion – and rejecting a place on Trump’s Gaza ‘Peace Council’, he positioned himself as the EU’s de-facto antagonist to the US leader.

Strategic autonomy, on Washington’s terms

The response to Trump’s mercantilism, he proclaimed, is “clearly building more economic sovereignty and strategic autonomy, especially for the Europeans.” Macron has already encouraged the EU to hit the US with retaliatory tariffs over the Greenland standoff, but his moves toward “strategic autonomy” have been flaccid to date.

The best he has mustered were two ceremonies where nothing actually happened, but intentions were declared. A vacuous military inspection at a French airfield where Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, battered by corruption scandals and facing economic collapse, signed a letter of intent to spend EU-loaned cash on 100 Dassault Rafale fighter jets. Not long afterwards he was part of the ‘coalition of the willing’ announcement of readiness to put troops on the ground in Ukraine in the aftermath of a peace deal – regarded as a red line by Moscow, which has declared that such troops would be regarded as legitimate military targets.

Macron’s portrayal of his decision-making as “strategically autonomous” is fundamentally misleading. He has announced that France plans to hike its defense budget by €36 billion ($42 billion) between 2026 and 2030 – but the increase is aligned with Trump’s demand that NATO members raise their defense spending. Secondly, by assuming all of the costs and risks of becoming Ukraine’s leading military sponsor, the EU allows Washington to extricate itself from a conflict it fomented and negotiate a settlement with Moscow.

Macron famously pronounced NATO “brain dead” in 2019 and called for “a true, European army” to protect the continent’s interests. The moment the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022, however, he abruptly reversed himself, declaring NATO “indispensable” and completely aligning his Ukraine policy with that of the Biden administration.

Talking peace, selling weapons

On matters of war and peace, Macron has repeatedly shown himself willing to talk out of both sides of his mouth and make deals that exist only on paper. The agreement to sell 100 fighter jets – which France doesn’t have and Ukraine can’t afford – to Ukraine is a case in point, as is his promise to deploy “several thousand” French troops to Ukraine if a peace deal with Russia is reached.

Macron proposed a G7 meeting in Paris on Thursday, with Denmark, Syria, Ukraine, and Russia attending “on the margins,” according to a text message leaked by Trump. During his speech, he followed this apparent olive branch by vowing to “build bridges with BRICS and the G20.”

However, he has admitted that his recent overtures to Russia – including a call last month for “re-engagement” with Moscow – are primarily aimed at securing Europe a place at peace negotiations. The problem here is that this outreach is outweighed by his promises of troops and weapons to Ukraine.

Likewise on Syria and BRICS, Macron told Trump in his message that France and the US are “totally in line on Syria” and “can do great things on Iran,” a BRICS member state recently threatened with military action by the US.

China is welcome… -ish

China, Macron told his Davos audience, “is welcome” in the EU. “We need more Chinese direct investment in Europe, particularly in critical sectors,” he said, before immediately lecturing Beijing for supposedly exporting substandard and subsidized goods to the EU.

In an interview with Les Echos last month, Macron referred to Chinese companies as “predators” with “hegemonic objectives,” and said that he used his most recent trip to Beijing to threaten China with tariffs if it didn’t close its trade surplus with the EU. China takes a dim view of such barriers, preferring what it calls “win-win cooperation” with trading partners.

Does anyone take Macron seriously?

From behind his aviators Macron insisted that he did not want Europe to “passively accept the law of the strongest, leading to vassalization and bloc politics.” Likewise, he said that to “adopt a purely moral posture, limiting ourselves to commentators, would condemn us to marginalization and powerlessness.”

Both outcomes are essentially guaranteed. In the US, Trump brushed off Macron’s refusal to join the Gaza ‘Peace Council’ on Monday. “Nobody wants him because he’s going to be out of office very soon,” he told reporters. “I’ll put a 200% tariff on his wines and champagnes and he’ll join.”

Trump’s tariff threat underlines the fundamental power imbalance between the US and Europe. In practical terms, Macron can posture about sovereignty all he wants, but he can’t impose economic pain on the United States without triggering far greater pain at home.

In Russia, the Kremlin is treating Macron’s talk of rapprochement as empty words. Noting that the French president has yet to pick up the phone and call President Vladimir Putin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week that what Macron calls diplomacy currently amounts to nothing more than a “PR campaign.”

US special envoy Steve Witkoff has said he will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin this week to discuss the settlement of the Ukraine conflict.

Witkoff made the announcement while speaking to CNBC on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday. “Well, look, ⁠we have to go meet him on Thursday,” Witkoff said, referring to Putin.

He noted that there has been “great progress” in settling the conflict in recent weeks, but said territorial disputes remain the key sticking point.

Witkoff also noted that he would be accompanied by US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. “Jared and I will leave Thursday night and arrive in Moscow late at night, and then go over to the UAE afterwards for working groups,” he said.

According to Witkoff, the meeting will take place at Russia’s request. “They’ve asked for the meeting. The Russians have invited us to come. And that’s a significant statement from them… So I think everybody is embedded in the process and wants to see a peace deal happen.”

Witkoff said the talks will be based on Washington’s 20-point peace plan. “We’re massaging it and harmonizing it, and I think we’re down to land deals now – that’s been the 800lb elephant in the room – and I think we have some very, very good ideas around that,” he stated.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed Witkoff and Kushner’s upcoming visit. He also noted that “it is important for us to obtain all the information on the discussions between Americans, Europeans, and Ukrainians” and the relevant proposals.

Witkoff’s comments come following his meeting with Kirill Dmitriev, a key special envoy to Putin, in Davos, on Tuesday, after the Kremlin said Moscow intended to pass “certain information” to the US on the settlement talks.

Witkoff met Putin at least six times in person in 2025 as part of efforts to advance peace talks, with the most recent five-hour talks taking place on December 2. At the time, Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov said that “no compromises have been found as of yet,” adding that “some American proposals are acceptable to Russia… others are not.”