On January 22, 2026, President Donald Trump said there would be “a big retaliation” if Europeans sold U.S. assets. He did not specify what retaliation would involve. The remark came during a Davos interview amid a dispute over Greenland and threatened U.S. tariffs on European countries; the reporting tied it to a planned sale by one Danish pension fund, not a coordinated European-government sell-off.
What Trump said in Davos
Trump made the remark during a Fox Business interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 22, 2026. Asked about Europeans selling U.S. assets, he said: “If they do, they do. But you know, if that would happen, there would be a big retaliation on our part,” followed by, “And we have all the cards.” Investing.com reported the remarks; The Daily Beast carried a closely matching account.
The backdrop was Trump’s push over Greenland and tariff threats against eight European nations. The Investing.com report says those tariff threats were subsequently abandoned. The contemporaneous reports do not describe a specific retaliatory measure, so the phrase should be understood as a warning, not an announced policy.
What prompted the question: a Danish pension fund’s plan
The immediate Treasury example in the reporting was AkademikerPension, a Danish pension fund that planned to sell its U.S. Treasury holdings by the end of January 2026. Investing.com reported the fund held about $100 million in Treasuries at the end of 2025. That is a figure for one fund, not a measure of European holdings as a whole.
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The fund cited credit risks associated with Trump’s policies. Its chief investment officer, Anders Schelde, said: “The US is basically not a good credit and long-term the US government finances are not sustainable,” Investing.com reported. That is Schelde’s assessment on behalf of the fund, not an independently established credit rating or consensus judgment.
The Daily Beast also reported that Greenland’s SISA Pension was considering whether to continue investing in U.S. stocks. That was a separate consideration involving stocks, not evidence of another Treasury sale.
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Did European governments sell Treasuries over Greenland?
The cited reporting does not establish that European governments coordinated a Treasury sale. It identifies a planned sale by a Danish pension fund and a separate discussion by a Greenlandic pension fund about U.S. stocks. Those actions or considerations are not equivalent to a decision by European governments to sell sovereign holdings.
The Treasury Department’s Major Foreign Holders table reports securities holdings by country and period, with monthly observations through July 2026 in the table accessed for this article. The figures are end-of-period amounts in billions of dollars. A country label indicates where holdings are reported; it does not by itself show that a government controls the securities or that the assets are beneficially owned there.
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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) notes that some large European-country totals, especially those associated with Belgium, Luxembourg, and Ireland, can reflect custodians and fund domiciles. European holdings are spread across governments, central banks, investment funds, and private investors. As a result, country totals cannot simply be added up and treated as assets European governments could order sold.
Could Europe use Treasury holdings as leverage?
There is a difference between selling existing holdings and changing financial flows—for example, altering future investment decisions. In a June 2026 policy brief, ECFR authors argued that European policymakers have more scope to act on flows than on the existing stock of holdings. That is the authors’ policy analysis, not an official European Union position or a prediction that governments will take such action.
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The brief explores possible responses as scenarios and cautions that events would not unfold exactly as described. It does not establish that any of those scenarios happened. The distinction matters: a pension fund’s investment decision is not the same as a coordinated government policy, and a country-of-custody figure is not necessarily a government-controlled asset.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the warning does—and does not—tell investors
Trump’s statement signals that he was willing to threaten a response if Europeans sold U.S. assets, but the contemporaneous reporting does not reveal what form that response might take. It therefore does not provide enough information to assess a specific policy consequence or to conclude that a retaliation plan was ready.
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For personal investors, the reported $100 million figure concerns AkademikerPension’s Treasury holdings, not a Europe-wide liquidation or a forecast of market effects. The available reporting also does not show that the fund’s plan caused a broader European sell-off. Keep fund-level decisions, government policy, and Treasury country statistics separate when interpreting the episode.
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