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How Trump's Greenland Plan Could Affect Ozempic, Lego and Hearing Aids

    President-elect Donald J. Trump has threatened tariffs on many countries for many different reasons.

    On Monday he found a new use for his favorite economic instrument. Mr Trump said he would “tax Denmark at a very high level” if it refused to allow Greenland – a North American island that is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark – to become part of the United States .

    “They should give it up because we need it for national security,” Trump said of Greenland.

    Denmark, which has a smaller population than New York City, is not a major trading partner for the United States. The country – a US ally and member of NATO – sent more than $11 billion worth of goods to the United States in 2023, just a small part of the more than $3 trillion in imports. The United States, in turn, sends Denmark more than $5 billion in goods, including industrial machinery, computers, aircraft and scientific instruments.

    But despite its small size, Denmark, which handles Greenland's foreign and security affairs, is home to a number of products much loved in America, goods that could become more expensive if Trump continues with high tariffs. According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, a trade data platform, roughly half of Denmark's recent exports to the United States are packaged medicines, insulin, vaccines and antibiotics.

    That's largely because the country is home to Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic and Wegovy, the popular weight-loss drugs. The company is so important to the Danish economy – it has recently been responsible for half of Denmark's private sector job growth and all of the country's economic growth – that some have branded Denmark a “pharmaceutical state.”

    Novo Nordisk is increasing its U.S. production to meet rising demand for its GLP-1 weight loss products. The company does not publicly disclose how many of its products are exported, but it produces drugs in Denmark and the United States for the American market.

    A spokesperson for Novo Nordisk said in a statement that they were closely monitoring the situation but would not comment on hypotheses and speculation.

    Gilberto Garcia, chief economist at Datawheel and member of the Observatory of Economic Complexity team, said Danish exports of immunological products, including drugs like Ozempic, have “grown exponentially.”

    Denmark is also the largest supplier of hearing aids to the United States, he said.

    In addition to medicines, Denmark also sends medical instruments, fish fillets, pork, coal tar oil, petroleum and baked goods to the United States, according to the OEC.

    And remarkably, for many children (and adults), Denmark is home to the Lego Group, the world's largest toy manufacturer.

    It is not clear how much Lego exports directly from Denmark to the United States; the company serves much of the U.S. market from a factory in Mexico, as well as a new carbon-neutral facility in Virginia. It also produces the toy bricks in factories in Hungary, the Czech Republic, China, Vietnam and Denmark. Lego did not respond to requests for comment.

    But Lego, like other multinational companies with global supply chains that move raw materials and products around the world, could see its business disrupted by tariffs. Mr. Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on products entering the United States from Mexico, China and other countries worldwide, in addition to Denmark.

    Mr. Trump's threats to claim Greenland came during a wide-ranging news conference in which the president-elect also proposed recapturing the Panama Canal and making Canada a U.S. state, all statements that angered foreign leaders.

    Trump argued on Tuesday that US ownership of Greenland is a matter of national security, given the routes charted by Russian and Chinese ships.

    “Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland,” Greenland Prime Minister Múte Egede wrote on Facebook on Tuesday. “Our future and struggle for independence is our business.”

    On Wednesday, a spokesperson for the European Commission called Trump's comments about the seizure of Greenland “hypothetical.” When asked about tariff threats, the spokesperson said the European Commission had prepared for all possible implications of a Trump presidency for trade in Europe.

    Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow in Brussels at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said few politicians in Europe take what Mr. Trump says literally.

    “This is an outrageous demand,” Mr. Kirkegaard said of Mr. Trump's threats to take Greenland. “The only way you can logically figure this out is that by making this outrageous demand, Trump will get some concessions that he otherwise wouldn't have gotten.”

    Mr Kirkegaard said that if Mr Trump carried out his threat to impose tariffs on Denmark, he could expect an EU-wide response. “This idea that he can pressure Denmark, as the only EU member state, to offer policy concessions by threatening tariffs will provoke retaliation from the entire EU.”

    Mr. Trump imposed tariffs on scores of countries and hundreds of billions of dollars of goods during his first term. But other tariff threats never materialized, and it is not clear how many of his new threats he will make good.

    On Tuesday, the president-elect also reiterated the threat to impose “very serious tariffs” on Mexico and Canada, lamented the U.S. trade deficit with Canada and the European Union, and floated an idea to make the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of Mexico'. America.”