After Canada, Denmark joins boycotts of American products in protest of Trump’s Greenland ownership claim

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Widespread anger over the Trump administration’s push for U.S. ownership of Greenland is prompting shoppers in Denmark to boycott American products and services such as Tesla, Netflix and Coca-Cola.

Supermarkets are making homegrown products more visible, cellphone apps are helping consumers work out where their purchases originate from, and Facebook groups have been set up offering tips on how to avoid American goods and services. 

Among them, “Boykot Varer Fra USA” or “Boycott goods from the USA,” which has gained almost 93,000 members since it was set last month to protest President Donald Trump’s repeated suggestions that the United States should take over the Arctic territory. 

“We love the U.S. and the culture, but we just dislike the president,” one of the group’s co-administrators, Bo Albertus, told NBC News in a telephone interview Saturday. He added that the Trump’s treatment of Greenland, which is part of Denmark, and has “a set of values that we do not share with Trump” was inspiring people to join the group, which has a crushed Coca-Cola can as its main image.  

Albertus, who works at a school for children with autism in Albertslund, a suburb of the capital, Copenhagen, added that the group was working with a similar campaign in neighboring Sweden. 

On both groups, users offer suggestions about alternatives to American products, such as locally made soft drinks, footwear or streaming services. Others have listed alternative burger chains and internet search engines. Many have taken inspiration from Canada where some people have been boycotting U.S. companies and products.

Aware that the group had been set up on Facebook, an American social media company, he said the group was “building our own infrastructure and working on a newsletter” to avoid it.   

Elsewhere in Europe, similar movements have sprung up, including “Le Boycott” in France, and “Tesla Takedown” protests, similar to those in the U.S., have taken place in the United Kingdom and Germany, along with several other countries. 

But in Denmark, the anger is particularly acute after Trump’s repeated suggestions that the U.S. should take over Greenland, a vast, sparse island — around the size of Alaska and California combined but with only 56,000 people. 

Tensions rose further after Vice President JD Vance suggested that Greenlanders would be better off being under the protection of the U.S. than under Denmark in a speech Friday to American service members at the Pituffik Space Base in the island’s northwest.

Denmark controlled Greenland for 300 years before it became a formal territory in 1953. Greenland gained home rule in 1979, although Copenhagen still controls its foreign and defense policy and contributes just under $1 billion to its economy.

People started to boycott American products after Trump’s inauguration, according to a March 1 survey by the market research firm Megafon for the Danish TV2 show. It found that every second Dane had refrained from buying American goods since then. And 1 in 5 also said they were less likely to visit the U.S.  

Elon Musk’s Tesla appears to have been one of the companies hit. Sales of the company’s vehicles in Denmark were down by almost half compared with last year, according to auto industry experts Bilstatistik.dk. As has been the case in other countries, some Danish Tesla owners have adorned their vehicles with stickers saying, “Not a Elon Musk supporter.”

Tesla did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment. NBC News has also reached out to Netflix and Coca-Cola.

Others are switching out more basic items such as canned goods, cola drinks and potato chips, while some stores have started to highlight where their products originate from. 

Spar convenience store chain locations have marked items produced in Denmark with the country’s flag, and the supermarket chain Salling group, which has 1,700 stores dotted around the country, has marked products with a star if they originate in Europe.  

Stressing that the stars were not a call for consumers to boycott American goods, Henrik Vinther Olesen, the Salling Group’s director of communication, said in an email Saturday that the stars were aimed at providing consumers with information about the origins of their products. 

“We are generally experiencing that customers shop like they usually do,” he added.

Two Danes, Henning Madsen and Ian Feldt, have also developed the “Made O´meter” app which allows people to take photos of the goods they are buying so they can find out where the product originated from. However, it is currently paused because it labeled American goods as European.   

Consumers like Peter Kolby were also thinking longer term, particularly when it came to the tech they are using. 

“I don’t have a problem with American goods as such,” he said in a telephone interview Monday. But the 31-year-old from the island of Fyn said he asked himself what he would do if “Trump closed all American tech down for us overnight?”

“When I hear this talk about Greenland, then I have to find alternatives to gmail, cloud, IOS, Microsoft,” he said, adding, “We have to be able to stand on our feet, as Trump has said. And that is what we are doing.”