Welcome back to the theater of the absurd, where the script is written by a real estate developer who’s spent too much time looking at a 19th-century map. Our latest act features Donald Trump threatening to set the global economy on fire with tariffs because Denmark won't hand over Greenland—a territory that is neither for sale nor particularly interested in becoming the site of a new mid-tier luxury hotel. It’s the ultimate ‘Art of the Deal’ tantrum: if I can’t buy the big frozen rock, I’m going to make sure your favorite Italian leather boots cost as much as a used Honda.

Enter Giorgia Meloni, the Italian Prime Minister, currently auditioning for the role of the 'Reasonable European.' She hopped on the phone to call these tariff threats a 'mistake,' which is diplomatic-speak for 'please don't ruin my domestic manufacturing sector over a glacier.' Let’s be honest: Meloni isn't standing on a mountain of principle here. She’s standing on a mountain of luxury exports. She knows that if the U.S. starts slapping duties on everything from Parmigiano-Reggiano to Ferraris because of a land-grab fantasy, her political capital evaporates faster than the polar ice caps.

This is the downward spiral the pundits are hand-wringing about. But it’s not a geopolitical tragedy; it’s just boutique extortion. We’ve reached a point where international trade policy is being used as a bargaining chip for a piece of land that Trump likely thinks is just a very large, unoccupied golf course. Meloni’s 'concern' is as performative as the threat itself—a necessary dance to show her voters she’s doing something while she waits to see if the American President is actually going to pull the trigger on a trade war over a map. It’s cynical, it’s exhausting, and it’s the only game in town. The world isn't a community; it's just a strip mall where the landlord is having a mid-life crisis and the tenants are terrified of the rent hike.