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Trump told Greenland is ‘not for sale’ as president-elect says US ownership an ‘absolute necessity’
Greenland has told Donald Trump that it is not for sale for a second time after the US president-elect renewed calls to buy the Danish terriotory.
Mr Trump first made designs on Greenland in 2019 and, despite his offer being rejected then, appears determined to try his luck at US owernship during his second term.
While annoucing his ambassador to Denmark on Sunday, Mr Trump wrote: “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.”
Greenland, the world’s largest island, sits between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. It is 80% covered by an ice sheet and is home to a large US military base.
It gained home rule from Denmark in 1979 and its head of government, Múte Bourup Egede, suggested that Trump’s latest calls for US control would be as meaningless as those made 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 our years-long fight for freedom.”
Mr Trump cancelled a 2019 visit to Denmark after his offer to buy Greenland was rejected by Copenhagen.
And it is not only Greenland Mr Trump has his eye on: over the weekend he said the US could retake control of the Panama Canal, a vital trade route linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, if rising shipping costs required for using the waterway were not addressed.
Ahead of his inaugration on January 20, Mr Trump has even suggested that Canada become the 51st US state, referring to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “governor” of the “Great State of Canada.”
He also suggested on Sunday that the US is getting “ripped off” at the Panama Canal. “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 the United States of America, in full, quickly and without question,” he said.
Panama President José Raúl Mulino responded in a video that “every square metre of the canal belongs to Panama and will continue to,” but Trump fired back on his social media site, “We’ll see about that!”
The president-elect also posted a picture of a US flag planted in the canal zone under the phrase, “Welcome to the United States Canal!” The United States built the canal in the early 1900s but relinquished control to Panama on December 31, 1999, under a treaty signed in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter.
The canal depends on reservoirs that were hit by 2023 droughts that forced it to substantially reduce the number of daily slots for crossing ships. With fewer ships, administrators also increased the fees that shippers are charged to reserve slots to use the canal.
The Greenland and Panama flareups followed Trump recently posting that “Canadians want Canada to become the 51st State” and offering an image of himself superimposed on a mountaintop surveying surrounding territory next to a Canadian flag.
