Can NATO Troops in Greenland Keep Trump at Bay?

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Luke Vargas (0:18)

European troops head to Greenland, hoping to tell Washington, to take the island, you'll have to get past us.

SPEAKER_3 (0:24)

It's clear that the president has this wish of conquering over Greenland. We made it very, very clear that this is not in the interest of the kingdom.

Luke Vargas (0:35)

Plus, President Trump appears to roll back threats of an imminent attack on Iran. And relentless AI demand boosts chipmaker TSMC to new heights. It's Thursday, January 15th. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. And here is the AM Edition of What's News. The top headlines and business stories moving your world today. Denmark and NATO allies Sweden, France and Germany are sending troops for military exercises in Greenland, a day after unsuccessful efforts by Danish and Greenlandic officials to persuade President Trump to abandon his pursuit of the island. And there could be more deployments to come, with Germany saying its reconnaissance forces would be assessing possible future military contributions. Here's our Brussels bureau chief, Daniel Michaels.

Daniel Michaels (1:22)

This is the first move of what is likely to be several exercises, deployments, repositionings of forces on and around Greenland to signal to the White House that Europe is serious about Arctic security. At the same time, these deployments are also assigned to Trump that if you want to take Greenland, you're going to have to deal with our soldiers on Greenland, and you will be getting in a conflict with your NATO allies.

Luke Vargas (1:54)

Trump has argued that the US needs Greenland for national security purposes, saying Denmark isn't doing enough to protect the island from China and Russia.

Daniel Michaels (2:03)

That argument doesn't hold water in Europe. In fact, the Danish and Greenlandic officials in Washington yesterday said that essentially there are no Chinese ships near Greenland. In fact, they see them at the other end of the Arctic, near Alaska. So the troops that are moving to Greenland are really moving there as a sign to Trump and not because of an immediate security threat to Greenland itself from potential adversaries outside NATO.

Luke Vargas (2:29)

French President Emmanuel Macron convened an emergency meeting this morning to look at how to handle the situation. But Dan said the limited military resources available in Europe mean there are few good options.

Daniel Michaels (2:40)

Europeans just don't have that many forces available at their disposal, especially forces that are ready for very harsh arctic conditions in Greenland. And it may well be that there aren't even places to put them in Greenland. So they do have to think about basic logistics issues like that. And these conversations are probably happening very quickly. Even though Trump has expressed interest in Greenland since 2019, it's really only been since the US military action to grab Venezuela's leader Nicolas Maduro that Greenland has really come back into focus and in a more serious way.

Luke Vargas (3:16)

Meanwhile, President Trump appears to be backing off threats of an imminent attack on Iran. After previously stating that help is on its way, Trump told reporters yesterday that Iran had stopped killing protesters.

SPEAKER_3 (3:29)

We're going to watch and see what the process is, but we were given a very good statement by people that are aware of what's going on.

Gregory Zuckerman (3:39)

They say no executions.

SPEAKER_3 (3:40)

Everyone is talking about a lot of executions were taking place today. We were just told no executions. I hope that's true.

Daniel Michaels (3:46)

That's a big thing.

Luke Vargas (3:47)

Iran briefly closed its airspace overnight, a step it took during fighting with Israel last year, though it has since been reopened. Should Trump decide to authorize an attack, his options could be reigned in by his redeployment of forces to the Caribbean, which has left the US without an aircraft carrier strike group in the Middle East.

We will see how long that Caribbean deployment lasts after the Trump administration yesterday assured lawmakers that it had no plans to send ground troops into or occupy Venezuela. That promise convinced a pair of Republican senators to back off their support for a bill aimed at limiting President Trump's war powers, leaving Vice President JD. Vance to break a tie in favor of the White House. Meanwhile, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Carina Machado is due to meet Trump at the White House today. Machado, who won last year's Nobel Peace Prize, had positioned herself as an ideological ally of Trump, only for the US to embrace Venezuelan Vice President and Maduro loyalist, Delci Rodriguez. In Minneapolis, residents clashed with law enforcement last night after a federal immigration agent shot and injured a Venezuelan immigrant. The Department of Homeland Security said the man fled a traffic stop before crashing his car and fleeing on foot, which led to a struggle with an officer. He was then shot in the leg and later taken to a hospital. In a statement, DHS said the man came to the US in 2022 and was in the country illegally. And California's Attorney General is investigating Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok over deepfakes. XAI is being probed by authorities around the world, following controversy over Grok's ability to generate sexual imagery of women and children. The company says it's now actively blocking the chatbot from undressing images of real people where it's illegal. Turning to markets, there are signs of growth in Europe. Germany's economy has expanded for the first time since 2022, thanks to huge investments into defense and infrastructure projects. Similarly, car manufacturers boosted UK GDP, which grew more than expected in November. On the earnings front, NVIDIA and Apple's relentless demand for AI chips boosted TSMC to record profits in 2025 The results are a relief for investors concerned about the cost of bringing semiconductor production to American soil as the world's largest contract chipmaker looks to mitigate the impact of US tariffs. And it's another big day for banks, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley releasing their Q4 results before the US market open. Coming up as part of an affordability push ahead of the midterms, President Trump is promising to cut credit card rates, stock buybacks, and executive pay. Now Wall Street is on the defensive. That's after the break.