Real reason Trump wants to buy Greenland
Greenland. Panama. Canada. Does incoming US President Donald Trump really want to make these the 51st, 52nd and 53rd United States?
Greenland. Panama. Canada. Does incoming US President Donald Trump really want to make these the 51st, 52nd and 53rd United States?
Trump’s eldest son has inflamed debate after posting an apparent joke proclaiming, “We are so back!!!” over an image of his father looking at a phone screen displaying an Amazon-style shopping cart.
His purchases, under “Proceed to checkout”, include the three sovereign territories.
Just days earlier, Eric Trump responded to a post from the President-elect about seizing the Panama Canal with the statement: “The grown-ups are back in charge”.
Whether or not the 47th President of the United States is serious about the territorial acquisitions remains unclear.
But the origins of the expansionist comments are.
His first quip came as he included Canada among Mexico and China as targets for steep import tariffs. Trump alleges all three states are colluding in the smuggling of the drug fentanyl into the United States.
We are so back!!! pic.twitter.com/PvybVULeAz
— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) December 24, 2024
A few days later, Trump revived the idea of purchasing Greenland.
The largely glacial landmass is strategically positioned between the United States and Russia. And access to the rapidly melting Arctic circle is of increasingly strategic importance.
Then, the President-elect threatened to seize control of the Panama Canal. He complains that the fees and charges for the drought-stricken shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are too high. And that China is taking control.
None are new ideas.
And Trump is not the first US president to have expansionist real-estate ambitions.
Greenland
“I love maps. And I always said: ‘Look at the size of this. It’s massive. That should be part of the United States,’” the former President was quoted as saying in 2022.
Now, a new episode of the long-running Trump-Greenland saga has begun.
“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” President-elect Trump proclaimed at the weekend.
The statement came shortly after he appointed PayPal co-founder Ken Howery as US Ambassador to Denmark.
The US has tried – and failed – to buy Greenland four times in the past.
Democrat President Harry Truman offered Denmark $US100 million in gold bullion in 1946.
Since then, the island’s 56,000 people have been granted partial autonomy. Though Denmark still provides up to 20 per cent of Greenland’s tiny economy and handles all defence and foreign diplomacy matters.
“Essentially, it’s a large real estate deal. A lot of things can be done,” Trump declared shortly after becoming President in 2019. He went on to tweet an image showing a golden Trump Tower soaring over a scenic Greenland Village (he promised he didn’t actually intend to build it).
It all reveals Trump understood Greenland’s value as a prime piece of real estate.
I promise not to do this to Greenland! pic.twitter.com/03DdyVU6HA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 20, 2019
“The melting ice will create new commercially valuable sailing routes from the east; Greenland maintains security importance to the United States as the site of its northernmost military base at Thule; and finally, Greenland could become a crucial rare-earth mineral source,” a Foreign Policy report asserts.
It’s an idea that also has an Australian connection.
Mining entrepreneur Gregory Barns recently agreed to sell his Tanbreez Greenland Rare Earth Mine – one of the world’s largest deposits of critical minerals – to a Chinese consortium.
“Barnes was said to have inspired Trump’s wish — a claim the Australian laughed at and categorically denied when I met him in Nuuk,” Foreign Policy analyst Regin Winther Poulsen writes.
As Greenland’s glaciers retreat, mining magnates anticipate vast tracts of untouched oil, gas and mineral resources to be exposed for the taking. But warming waters also mean critical fish stocks are moving north. And new shipping lanes are opening across the Arctic.
“Setting aside the potential resource benefits for the United States if it were to acquire Greenland, the geopolitical strategic significance would be considerable,” Donald Rothwell argued in a 2019 analysis for the Lowy Institute.
“It is not widely appreciated that the Arctic today is being actively contested both for its potential maritime resource riches and its potential commercial and military shipping routes. By virtue of its particular location, Greenland may be able to generate an extended continental shelf well beyond its current 200-nautical-mile limit to reach as far as, if not beyond, the geographic North Pole, thereby countering Russian claims to that area.”
Panama Canal
“Has anyone ever heard of the Panama Canal?” Trump told a convention at the weekend. “Because we’re being ripped off at the Panama Canal like we’re being ripped off everywhere else.”
The canal has long been a central plank in the US economy.
It was initiated in 1904 as a means of linking the eastern and western seaboard.
Washington largely funded and built the lock infrastructure. It also administered the operation of the passage, as well as the surrounding territory.
Panama Canal now carries about 2.5 per cent of global shipping traffic. But its significance is far higher for the United States. Some 40 per cent of its container and tanker shipping uses it to bypass Chile’s Cape Horn.
The US handed control of the canal and surrounding lands back to Panama in 1999 under a 1979 treaty signed by President Howard Carter. However, many US politicians consider this treaty a strategic disaster.
“It was given to Panama and the people of Panama, but it has provisions. You get to treat us fairly, and they haven’t treated us fairly. If the principles, both moral and legal, of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, and without question,” Trump demanded in a weekend social media posting spree.
Panama’s management of the canal cannot be faulted.
It has expanded the locks to carry significantly larger ships. And it is carefully managing water supplies and traffic levels as an extended drought drains lakes needed to refill the channels.
But Beijing has been expanding its interests in South and Central America.
On Christmas Day, Trump complained that China was “operating” the canal, and that Panama had offered Washington no return for “Billions of Dollars in ‘repair’ money”.
China’s Hutchison Ports PPC – which owns Sydney’s Port Botany and the Port of Brisbane – has purchased control of ports on either side of the canal. While not controlling the canal itself, these ports are central to the efficient transfer of shipping from one side to the other.
US Southern Command General Laura Richardson recently told a US Senate hearing these purchases “pose a potential threat” to US economic activities.
Canada
In recent weeks, President-elect Trump has suggested that Canada become part of the Union. He’s also referred to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as the “governor” of the “Great State of Canada.”
“Many Canadians want Canada to become the 51st State,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform last week. “They would save massively on taxes and military protection. I think it is a great idea. 51st State!!!” he added.
But Trump has little love for his nation’s northern neighbours.
“Canada has been very difficult to deal with … they’re very spoiled,” he said in 2018. “They have been taking advantage of the United States for a long time. I am not happy with their requests. But I will tell you in the end we win, we will win and we’ll win big.”
Many economists are at a loss attempting to understand Trump’s claims of an $US100 billion trade deficit. Such a figure, some argue, can only be reached if US service exports are ignored. And if re-exports (where imported goods are passed on to Canada) are added to the tally.
Now Trump is accusing Canada of complicity in US illegal immigration and fentanyl drug trades.
On November 25, Trump included Canada with Mexico and China as targets for a 25 per cent tariff on “ALL products … until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!”
Four days later, Prime Minister Trudeau flew to Mar-a-Logo for talks with the President-in-waiting.
Fox News reports the meeting didn’t go so well.
“Trump joked to him that if Canada can’t survive without ripping off the US to the tune of $100 billion a year, then maybe Canada should become the 51st state and Trudeau could become its governor,” the network reported sources close to Trump as saying.
Buyer beware
Perhaps unsurprisingly, President-elect Trump’s real estate ambitions have not been met with enthusiasm.
“Greenland is ours,” its Prime Minister, Múte Bourup Egede, responded this week. “We are not for sale, and we will never be for sale. We must not lose our long fight for freedom.”
Denmark first rejected the idea in 2019. A spurned Trump then cancelled his official state visit to the European nation.
Canada, meanwhile, appears confounded at the unexpected turn of events with its long-term southern friend and ally.
None, however, should be surprised.
The United States has a long and controversial history of real estate acquisitions.
A dodgy deal in 1737 swindled the Delaware Indians out of their lands. It was one of many similar legal transactions made with uncomprehending tribes.
In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson conducted a more above-board deal to buy 2.1 million square kilometres of North America from France for $US15 million. In 1854, the US spent $10 million buying what is now southern Arizona and California.
Then, in 1867, shortly after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, the federal government bought “renovator’s dream” Alaska from Russia for the bargain-basement sum of $US7 million. And in 1917, Denmark sold it the Danish West Indies (now the Virgin Islands) for $US25 million.
Other transactions involved an exchange of bullets.
The US annexed the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893. And it seized the strategic Philippine Islands after the Spanish-American War in 1898.
But not all US ventures have been so successful.
An attempt to invade Canada in 1812 backfired. A British counter-attack surged deep into US territory, eventually capturing the capital in August 1814. Several buildings – including the White House – were set alight.
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