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South Korea’s Hyundai Steel will invest $5.8 billion along with Hyundai Motor Group to build a steel plant in the U.S. state of Louisiana with an annual capacity of 2.7 million tonnes, the company said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday. Hyundai Steel shares initially jumped more than 5% on the news but reversed early gains to end 7% lower as U.S. President Donald Trump praised the company’s plan. Hyundai Steel’s proposed new U.S. steel plant is part of Hyundai Motor Group’s plan to invest $21 billion in the United States, which was announced by the South Korean company’s chairman with Trump at the White House on Monday. The move is seen as an effort by Hyundai to shield itself from U.S. tariffs on steel and cars, but it is not clear whether this will help secure exemptions for Hyundai and South Korea. Trump has threatened to impose reciprocal tariffs on numerous countries on April 2, potentially targeting South Korea that has a large trade surplus with the United States. Shares of Hyundai Motor and affiliate Kia Corp, which are expected to source steel from the proposed factory, rallied. Hyundai Motor shares ended up 3.3% after rising as much as 7.5% to their highest since October 2024. Kia closed up 2.1%. Analysts have, however, expressed concerns about how Hyundai Steel, which has billions of dollars in debt, would fund the construction of the factory. There are also execution risks associated with the new technology of using electric furnaces to produce automotive steel, they said. “It is not clear whether the investment will benefit Hyundai Steel in the future,” said Lee Tae-hwan, an analyst at Daishin Securities. Hyundai Steel said it will cover half the costs, with the remainder invested by its parent company and other investors. The factory, which will make automotive steel, will be constructed from 2026 to 2029, the company said. Hyundai Steel is an affiliate of automakers Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors which have factories in the United States. Hyunjoo Jin and Jihoon Lee, Reuters
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Tesla’s market share in Europe continued to shrink in February as sales of the all-electric car maker dropped for a second month even as EV registrations overall on the continent grew. As competition grows and a slowdown in European economies hampers total car sales, Elon Musk’s battery-electric (BEV) brand has sold 42.6% fewer cars in Europe so far this year, data from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) showed on Tuesday. Tesla commanded 1.8% of the total market and 10.3% of the BEV market in February, down from 2.8% and 21.6% respectively last year. It sold fewer than 17,000 cars in the European Union, Britain, and European Free Trade Association countries, compared to over 28,000 in the same month in 2024. Tesla currently faces a number of challenges in Europe, ahead of the launch of its new Model Y midsize SUV this month. The EV maker has a smaller, aging lineup while traditional automaker rivals and new Chinese entrants alike continue to launch new, often cheaper electric models. Musk, the company’s CEO, has also stirred controversy by courting far-right parties in Europe, which has added to Tesla’s sales slump. “It will be interesting to see to what extent demand rebounds once the new Model Y hits markets across the region,” Felipe Munoz, Global Analyst at JATO Dynamics, said in a report on Monday. Overall, BEV sales in the same markets last month were up 26.1% versus February 2024, even as total car sales fell 3.1%, according to the ACEA. A growing interest in electric cars in the world’s second-biggest EV market is largely due to new EU emission targets and the launch of cheaper electric models, market experts say, but it is not enough to compensate for shrinking demand for petrol and diesel cars. “We continue to expect global auto volume essentially flat” this year, Citi analysts said in a note. An EU filing showed last week that Tesla had formed a pool to sell carbon credits to more than half a dozen automakers as they try to meet European CO2 emission targets which came into effect in January. While based on 2024 figures, analysts estimate that Tesla’s sales can more than compensate for those companies’ emissions, the situation might change if its sales continue to drop. The EU introduced the targets to help EV pickup in the bloc, but it is expected to approve on Tuesday a relaxation of those measures, to allow a three-year averaging of fleet emissions. While total new car registrations in the EU fell 3.4% in February, BEV sales jumped 23.7%, a second consecutive increase, while hybrid car (HEV) sales rose 19%. Electrified vehicles – either BEV, HEV or plug-in hybrids (PHEV)sold in the bloc accounted for 58.4% of all passenger car registrations in February, up from 48.2% a year earlier. “2025 has started really brightly for Europe’s electric car market,” E-Mobility Europe’s Secretary General Chris Heron told Reuters. “We are seeing the early impacts from manufacturer plans to meet the EU’s scheduled CO2 limits”. Among Europe’s top-selling brands, Volkswagen and Renault’s sales rose 4% and 10.8%, respectively, from a year earlier in the EU, Britain and European Free Trade Association countries in February, while Stellantis’ sales fell 16.2%. Sales at SAIC Motor rose by 26.1% from a year earlier despite the impact of EU tariffs on Chinese-made EVs, while they were down 15% at Geely-owned Volvo. The market share of brands not accounted for by the ACEA, including BYD and other Chinese carmakers, rose to 2.5% from 1.5% a year earlier. Total car sales in Spain rose 11% year-on-year in the month, while they declined in other major markets, with registrations falling 6.4% in Germany, 6.2% in Italy, and 0.7% in France. Alessandro Parodi and Greta Rosen Fondahn, Reuters
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E-Commerce
Lisa Sólrun Christiansen gets up at 4 a.m. most days and gets to work knitting thick wool sweaters coveted by buyers around the world for their warmth and colorful patterns celebrating Greenland’s traditional Inuit culture.Her morning routine includes a quick check of the news, but these days the ritual shatters her peace because of all the stories about U.S. President Donald Trump’s designs on her homeland.“I get overwhelmed,” Christiansen said earlier this month as she looked out to sea, where impossibly blue icebergs floated just offshore.The daughter of Inuit and Danish parents, Christiansen, 57, cherishes Greenland. It is a source of immense family pride that her father, an artist and teacher, designed the red-and-white Greenlandic flag.“On his deathbed he talked a lot about the flag, and he said that the flag is not his, it’s the people’s,” she said. “And there’s one sentence I keep thinking about. He said, ‘I hope the flag will unite the Greenlandic people.'” Island of anxiety Greenlanders are increasingly worried that their homeland, a self-governing region of Denmark, has become a pawn in the competition between the U.S., Russia, and China as global warming opens up access to the Arctic. They fear Trump’s aim to take control of Greenland, which holds rich mineral deposits and straddles strategic air and sea routes, may block their path toward independence.Those fears were heightened Sunday when Usha Vance, the wife of U.S. Vice President JD Vance, announced she would visit Greenland later this week to attend the national dogsled race. Separately, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz and Energy Secretary Chris Wright will visit a U.S. military base in northern Greenland.The announcement inflamed tensions sparked earlier this month when Trump reiterated his desire to annex Greenland just two days after Greenlanders elected a new parliament opposed to becoming part of the U.S. Trump even made a veiled reference to the possibility of military pressure, noting the U.S. bases in Greenland and musing that “maybe you’ll see more and more soldiers go there.”News of the visit drew an immediate backlash from local politicians, who described it as a display of U.S. power at a time they are trying to form a government.“It must also be stated in bold that our integrity and democracy must be respected without any external interference,” outgoing Prime Minister Múte Boroup Egede said.Greenland, part of Denmark since 1721, has been moving toward independence for decades. It’s a goal most Greenlanders support, though they differ on when and how that should happen. They don’t want to trade Denmark for an American overlord.The question is whether Greenland will be allowed to control its own destiny at a time of rising international tensions when Trump sees the island as key to U.S. national security. David vs. Goliath While Greenland has limited leverage against the world’s greatest superpower, Trump made a strategic mistake by triggering a dispute with Greenland and Denmark rather than working with its NATO allies in Nuuk and Copenhagen, said Otto Svendsen, an Arctic expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.Trump’s actions, he says, have united Greenlanders and fostered a greater sense of national identity.“You have this feeling of pride and of self-determination in Greenland that the Greenlanders are not, you know, cowed by this pressure coming from Washington,” Svendsen said. “And they’re doing everything in their power to make their voices heard.”Denmark recognized Greenland’s right to independence at a time of its choosing under the 2009 Greenland Self-Government Act, which was approved by local voters and ratified by the Danish parliament. The right to self-determination is also enshrined in the United Nations charter, approved by the U.S. in 1945. U.S. national security But Trump is more focused on the economic and security needs of the U.S. than the rights of smaller nations. Since returning to office in January, he has pressured Ukraine into giving the U.S. access to valuable mineral resources, threatened to reclaim the Panama Canal, and suggested that Canada should become the 51st state.Now he has turned his attention to Greenland, a territory of 56,000 people, most from indigenous Inuit backgrounds.Greenland guards access to the Arctic at a time when melting sea ice has reignited competition for energy and mineral resources and attracted an increased Russian military presence. The Pituffik Space Base on the island’s northwest coast supports missile warning and space surveillance operations for the U.S. and NATO.Before Trump’s reelection, Greenlanders hoped to leverage this unique position to help the country achieve independence. Now they fear it has made them vulnerable.Cebastian Rosing, who works for a water taxi firm that offers tours around the Nuuk fjord, said he’s frustrated that Trump is trying to take over just as Greenland has begun to assert its autonomy and celebrate its Inuit origins.“It’s so weird to defend (the idea) that our country is our country because it’s always been our country,” he said. “We’re just getting our culture back because of colonialism.” Strategic importance It’s not that Greenlanders don’t like the U.S. They have welcomed Americans for decades.The U.S. effectively occupied Greenland during World War II, building a string of air and naval bases.After the war, President Harry Truman’s government offered to buy the island because of “the extreme importance of Greenland to the defense of the United States.” Denmark rejected the proposal but signed a long-term base agreement.When Trump resurrected the proposal during his first term, it was quickly rejected by Denmark and dismissed as a headline-grabbing stunt. But now Trump is pursuing the idea with renewed energy.During a speech earlier this month he told a joint session of Congress that the U.S. needed to take control of Greenland to protect its national security. “I think we’re going to get it,” Trump said. “One way or the other.” A model in the Marshall Islands? Even so, Trump has his admirers in Greenland.And there is no greater fan than Jrgen Boassen. When he spoke to the Associated Press, Boassen wore a T-shirt featuring a photo of Trump with his fist in the air and blood streaming down his face after an assassination attempt last year. Underneath was the slogan, “American Badass.”Boassen works for an organization called American Daybreak, which was founded by former Trump official Thomas Dans an promotes closer ties between the U.S. and Greenland.The former bricklayer, who describes himself as “110%” Inuit, has a litany of complaints about Denmark, most stemming from what he sees as mistreatment of local people during colonial rule. In particular, he cites Inuit women who say they were fitted with birth control devices without their permission during the 1970s.Trump must act to secure America’s back door, Boassen says, because Denmark has failed to guarantee Greenland’s security.But even he wants Greenland to be independent, a U.S. ally but not the 51st state.What he has in mind is something more like the free-association agreement the Marshall Islands negotiated with the U.S. when it became independent in 1986. That agreement recognizes the Pacific archipelago as a sovereign nation that conducts its own foreign policy but gives the U.S. control over defense and security.“We’re in 2025,” Boassen said. “So I don’t believe they can come here and take over.”Whatever happens, most Greenlanders agree that the island’s fate should be up to them, not Trump.“We have to stand together,” Christiansen said, her knitting needles clicking and clacking. This story, supported by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, is part of an ongoing Associated Press series covering threats to democracy in Europe. Danica Kirka, Associated Press
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