Donald Trump’s intention to take over the Danish territory of Greenland was a real blow to a Europe that has seen the United States as its main ally for decades. Although the waters seem to have calmed down after the pact reached at the Davos summitthis attack on the sovereignty of Denmark has not been forgotten by the main victims: the Danes. Now, with the help of an application called UdenUSA (an expression that can be translated as without the United States), consumers in the Nordic country have said enough (it just is).
Its operation is simple. Using their mobile phones, buyers can analyze each of the products on the shelves of Danish supermarkets. A bottle of French champagne? A green tick gives its blessing, a can of Coca-Cola zero? A red cross invites you to return it to the shelf. As the tone of Trump’s threats about Greenland escalated, UdenUSA’s downloads also intensified. Finally, this week has become the Current most downloaded free app on the Danish App Store.
Jonas Pipper, the 21-year-old who has co-developed this application, describes it as “a weapon for the trade war within the reach of consumers.” According to Bloomberg, Pipper considers that giving Danish citizens the opportunity to send a message to the United States is something “pretty cool.”
With barely six million inhabitants, one million fewer people than the Community of Madrid, Denmark’s boycott is not destined to make a big hole in the United States economy. More so if you take into account that UdenUSA focuses on basic products, ignoring the services and technology aspect, the true backbone of American corporate power. But it is a sign of how the Trump administration’s measures are creating growing discontent and unrest among the United States’ historical allies. After taking on Denmark, Trump’s focus now seems to be on Canada, another country historically friendly to the Americans that has endured threats of 100% tariffs despite all the ties that unite them.
Beyond the battle on the shelves of the Danish supermarket, Trump’s erratic and aggressive foreign policy is also having its reflection in the markets. And this can end up doing more harm than not buying a can of Coca-Cola Zero. At the height of the tension over Greenland, when Trump threatened to impose tariffs on European countries that had sent troops to the island, the investors activated what has begun to be called in the jargon as sell America (sells America). The dollar depreciated, the US bond’s yield increased, making the cost of US debt more expensive, and the main stock index, the S&P 500, fell.
One of the institutional investors who joined the sell America was the Danish pension fund AkdemikerPension. This investment vehicle decided to sell all of the US debt it had in its portfolio. Although the sale was a grain of sand in the immensity of the desert of US debt – 100 million dollars within the 28 trillion European debt that the American country has, according to Bloomberg data corresponding to January 21 – the symbolism of the movement attracted global attention.
Far from receiving the message, the Trump administration seems to have chosen to castle and redouble its bet. At the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ridiculed the possibility that Europe could adopt a UdenUSA approach to financial markets. Asked about AkdemikerPension’s decision, Bessent boasted: “Danish investments in US debt, like Denmark itself, are irrelevant.”
Anders Schelde, head of investments at AkdemikerPension, explained that the pension fund’s decision was based on a list of reasons, among which he mentioned Greenland, the apparent lack of fiscal discipline in the United States and the weakness of the dollar. He also argued that caution toward the United States may go beyond Donald Trump. “You can’t put the genie back in the lamp,” Schelde said. “Things may improve and calm down in a couple of months, and Trump cannot be re-elected, and the next president may be different from him, but what will happen in five, six or ten years?” he reflected.
Nobody knows what will happen in that period. Nor is it known how long the boycott of American products facilitated by UdenUsa will last or how intense it will be. For now, the Danish application is at the top of free downloads from the Apple App Store in Denmark, is already available in six languages (Danish, English, French, German, Norwegian and Swedish) and is preparing its arrival on smartphones that use Android. “I don’t know if Trump has an iPhone,” says Pipper, “but if he wants, he can also use the app,” he concludes.
