Trump threatens to take control of Greenland amid Panama spat
Donald Trump has suggested taking Greenland from Denmark as the Panamanian president reacts angrily to a threat the US will take over the Panama Canal.
President-elect Donald Trump is openly discussing provocative aspirations to expand America’s global footprint as he prepares to return to the White House, musing about taking over the Panama Canal and wresting control of Greenland from Denmark.
His comments, delivered in public remarks and social-media posts on Sunday, come after he recently trolled Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by suggesting that Canada should become the 51st state and referring to Trudeau as a governor. During the recent presidential campaign, Mr Trump said he would deploy the US military to impose a naval embargo on Mexican cartels and order the Pentagon to use American special forces to take down cartel leaders.
Taken together, the president-elect’s broadsides signal that he will pursue a confrontational foreign-policy agenda, leveraging unconventional threats and pointed demands in an attempt to gain advantage over allies and adversaries alike. Mr Trump is often prone to provocation, and it wasn’t immediately clear if he would try to follow through on his demands. But if he does, he is likely to face stiff resistance from world leaders, who would object to any effort to undermine their sovereignty.
“We’re being ripped off at the Panama Canal like we’re being ripped off everywhere else,” Mr Trump said at a conservative conference in Phoenix on Sunday, demanding the return of the state-run canal to the US “We will never, never let it fall into the wrong hands.” Mr Trump didn’t specify how he would take back control of the canal.
Later Sunday, in a statement announcing his pick for US ambassador to Denmark, Mr Trump signalled his continued interest in taking control of Greenland. “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,” Mr Trump said.
Denmark controls the self-governing island, which sits at a strategically important location in the North Atlantic.
Mr Trump, who made his name in real estate, discussed purchasing Greenland in his first term. After The Wall Street Journal reported on his private deliberations on the matter, officials in Denmark and Greenland dismissed the idea. “We’re open for business, not for sale,” Greenland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said at the time.
Mr Trump’s comments about the Panama Canal drew an angry rebuke from Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, who took office in July after campaigning on a platform to curb US-bound migration through the country’s pristine tropical rainforests with support from the US government. He rejected Mr Trump’s threats as an affront to Panama’s sovereignty.
“Every square metre of the Panama Canal and its adjacent area belongs to Panama and will continue to be so,” Mulino responded in a televised address Sunday afternoon.
“The sovereignty and independence of our country aren’t negotiable.”
“We’ll see about that!” Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform later in the day. He added in another social-media post featuring an image of a waterway and an American flag, “Welcome to the United States Canal!”
Short of an invasion, as the US carried out in 1989 to overthrow then-dictator Manuel Noriega, the US government has no ability to restore control of the canal, which the US built more than a century ago.
The US gradually handed back control of the canal – as well as the US-governed Panama Canal Zone, which ran through the middle of the country – as a result of a 1977 treaty signed by President Jimmy Carter. Panama gained full control of the canal in 2000.
“Trump believes the US gave away something for nothing,” said John Feeley, who resigned as US ambassador to Panama during Mr Trump’s first term. “For him, it’s yet another example of a country taking advantage of the US”
Mr Trump’s warning comes after he recently threatened to impose tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada if the countries failed to secure their respective borders with the US and curb drug trafficking and illegal migration. Mr Trump went so far as to troll Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by suggesting that Canada become the 51st state and calling him governor.
The 80km Panama Canal, through which about 4 per cent of global trade passes, is crucial for the global economy and US consumers. Chilean wines and Ecuadorean bananas are shipped to the US East Coast through the canal, as is copper from Chile to Europe and liquefied natural and petroleum gas from one US coast to the other.
Unlike Suez, a flat seawater canal whose stream flow is defined by the tide, the Panama Canal is a much more complex infrastructure. The Panama Canal relies on freshwater and uses a system of locks as aquatic elevators, lifting ships almost 90 feet above sea level onto a navigable waterway and then lowering them down the other end. The US is the canal’s top user, followed by China.
Mr Trump said the handover of the canal was solely for Panama to manage, “and not for China or any other country to manage.” “You see what’s going on there – China,” Mr Trump told supporters on Sunday.
China has replaced the US as the dominant trading partner in Latin America. Seven of the 11 nations worldwide that maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which Beijing considers as part of its territory, are in the region. Five that switched recognition to Beijing under Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s watch, including Honduras and Panama, were showered with Chinese deals.
After gaining control of the canal, Panama spent $5 billion in a project to build locks to accommodate larger ships. But the Panama waterway faces more serious long-term challenges that could disrupt global shipping. It had to adapt its operations in recent years, boosting prices, restricting traffic and draft because of diminishing rainwater needed to operate the waterway.
Canal authorities are working on a $2 billion plan to build infrastructure to manage and preserve freshwater reserves – an amount equal to the canal’s annual contributions to Panama’s government coffers.
Since the US handover, there have been no complaints by users, Mulino said. “On the contrary, it has been a source of strong international support and national pride,” Mulino said in his video address. “These treaties also established the permanent neutrality of the canal.” The decadeslong struggle for Panama to obtain control of the waterway and the canal zone has always been the focus of Panamanian nationalism.
In recent weeks, the canal’s administration aired television ads celebrating the waterway’s handover as a source of pride to the nation. On Jan. 9, Panama commemorates Martyr’s Day, which marks the death of more than 20 Panamanians killed in 1964 riots protesting US control of the 10-mile-wide canal zone that bisected the country.
Feeley said Mulino’s strong comments had been aimed at his domestic audience. The Panamanian president should have just ignored Mr Trump, he said. “A better Mulino response would have been silence,” Feeley said. “The best he can hope for now is that Trump will get distracted by something else on Monday morning.” In neighbouring Colombia, President Gustavo Petro said he will be on Panama’s side and in defence of its sovereignty ” until the very end.” “If the new US government wants to talk business, we will talk business, face-to-face, and for the benefit of our people, but dignity will never be negotiated,” Petro wrote on X.
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