Donald Trump makes fresh call for US to buy Greenland
23 December 2024, 16:04
He also suggested during the weekend that the US could retake control of the Panama Canal.
President-elect Donald Trump has renewed unsuccessful calls he made during his first term for the US to buy Greenland from Denmark.
His call adds to the list of allied countries he is picking fights with even before taking office on January 20.
In an announcement naming his ambassador to Denmark, 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.”
Mr Trump’s designs on Greenland came after he suggested during the weekend that the US could retake control of the Panama Canal if something is not done to ease rising shipping costs required for using the waterway linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
He has also been suggesting that Canada become the 51st US state and referred to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “governor” of the “Great State of Canada”.
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, Mute Bourup Egede, suggested that Mr 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 visit to Denmark in 2019 after his offer to buy Greenland was rejected by Copenhagen, and ultimately came to nothing.
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 Jose Raul Mulino responded in a video that “every square metre of the canal belongs to Panama and will continue to”, but Mr 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 flare-ups followed Mr 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.
Mr Trudeau suggested that Mr Trump was joking about annexing his country, but the pair met recently at Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida to discuss Mr Trump’s threats to impose a 25% tariff on all Canadian goods.
