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First there was Canada, then the Panama Canal. Now, Donald Trump he wants Greenland again.
The president-elect is renewing the failed calls he made during his first term to buy the US Greenland from Denmark, which he added to the list of allied countries with which he is fighting even before taking office on January 20.
In an announcement Sunday naming his ambassador to Denmark, Trump wrote that, “For the purposes of national security and freedom throughout the world, the United States of America considers ownership and control of Greenland to be an absolute necessity.”
Trump is again on the Greenland agenda after the president-elect suggested over the weekend that the US could regain control of the Panama Canal if nothing is done to reduce the rising shipping costs needed to use the waterway that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
He also suggested that Canada become the 51st US state and called Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau the “governor” of the “Great Country of Canada.”
Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, said Trump’s accommodation of friendly countries is reminiscent of the aggressive style he used during his business days.
“You ask for something unreasonable, and it’s more likely you can get something less unreasonable,” said Farnsworth, who is also the author of “Presidential Communication and Character.”
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Greenland, the largest island in the world, is located between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. It is covered by 80% ice and is home to a large US military base. It was given home rule by Denmark in 1979, and its head of government, Múte Bourup Egede, has suggested that Trump’s latest calls for American control would be as meaningless as those in his first term.
“Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale,” he said in a statement. “We must not lose the multi-year struggle for freedom.”
Trump canceled a visit to Denmark in 2019 after Copenhagen rejected his offer to buy Greenland, which ultimately ended in failure.
He also suggested on Sunday that the US had been “robbed” in the Panama Canal.
“If the principles, moral and legal, of this generous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America, in its entirety, quickly and without question,” he said.
Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino responded in a video that “every square meter of the canal belongs to Panama and will continue to be so,” but Trump shot back on his social media page: “We’ll see about that!”
The president-elect also posted a picture of an American flag placed in the Canal Zone under the words “Welcome to the United States Canal!”
The United States built the canal in the early 1900s, but ceded control to Panama on December 31, 1999 under an agreement signed in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter.
The canal is dependent on reservoirs that were hit by droughts in 2023 that forced it to significantly reduce the number of daily slots for ships to cross. Along with fewer ships, administrators have also increased the fees charged to shippers to reserve space to use the canal.
The Greenland and Panama flare-ups came after Trump recently announced that “Canadians want Canada to become the 51st country” and offered a picture of himself perched on a mountaintop overlooking the surrounding territory next to a Canadian flag.
Trudeau suggested Trump was joking about annexing his country, but the two recently met at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida to discuss Trump’s threats to impose 25 percent tariffs on all Canadian goods.
“Canada will not become part of the United States, but Trump’s comments are more about exploiting what he says to get concessions from Canada by putting Canada off balance, especially given the uncertain political environment in Canada right now,” Farnsworth said. “Maybe ask for a win on trade concessions, a tighter border or other things.”
He said that the situation with Greenland is similar.
“What Trump wants is to win,” Farnsworth said. “Even if the American flag is not raised over Greenland, the Europeans might be more willing to say yes to something else because of the pressure.”
— Associated Press writer Gary Fields in Washington contributed to this report.
© 2024 The Canadian Press
