Brussels – Comments by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump regarding Washington’s presumed need to establish some control over Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal have not gone unnoticed. During a packed press conference at his Mar-a-Lago residence, the New York-based tycoon made some geo-economic remarks that elicited immediate reactions from the U.S.’s European and South American partners, starting with Denmark, Canada, and Panama.
The face-to-face meeting staged yesterday (Jan. 7) between Donald Trump, who will be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States next Jan. 20, and reporters in the setting of the Republican politician’s famous residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, lasted about an hour and a half. Trump has not ruled out recourse to the military to wrest control of Greenland from Denmark (under whose authority the Arctic island has formally been since 1814) and that of the Panama Canal to the Central American state of the same name.
The “threats” to Greenland
“No, I can’t assure you of either of these issues,” he responded to a reporter who wanted to know whether the tycoon ruled out “military or economic coercion” to achieve such goals. He added that “we need them for national economic security.” The president-elect also questioned Denmark‘s “legal right” to exercise its sovereignty over Greenland.
After all, it is not the first time Trump has floated such an idea. Already during his first term, he had publicly suggested that Washington should buy its overseas territory from Copenhagen, an offer categorically rejected by the Danish government, which, now as then, has reiterated that Greenland belongs to its inhabitants. The prime minister of the world’s largest island (on which more than 56,000 inhabitants live), Mute Egede, reiterated that his government is pushing for independence from Denmark but also made it clear that Greenland’s territory “is not for sale.”
For President-elect Trump, that territory (located in North America but historically controlled by the Scandinavian crowns) has a crucial strategic value, as it would allow tracking the movements of Chinese and Russian ships in the upper Atlantic. A U.S. radar base has been on the island since the Cold War. “I’m talking about protecting the free world,” he told reporters. Also in the Greenlandic subsurface are important reserves of rare earths, critical to the green and digital transition, as well as natural gas and oil fields that may soon become explorable due to global warming.
European reactions
The responses from the other side of the Atlantic were not long in coming. European People’s Party (EPP) MEP Tomas Tobé shared on X the words of Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen that “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders” and “is not for sale.”
Respect for the territorial integrity of all states is fundamental. Important in these strange and uncertain times that the other Nordic countries and entire EU clearly stands behind Denmark. #StrongerTogether pic.twitter.com/8IrKvftbBw
– Tomas Tobé (@tomastobe) January 8, 2025#
“There is no question of the EU allowing other countries, whoever they may be, to attack its sovereign borders,” argued French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot. “If you ask me if I think the United States will invade Greenland, my answer is no,” he added while wondering if “we have entered an era that sees the return of survival of the fittest, then the answer is yes.” “We need to wake up, build our strength” at the European level, he concluded.
From Berlin, outgoing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared that Trump’s comments are generating “misunderstanding” among European leaders, reiterating that the principle of inviolability of borders and state sovereignty applies to every country and is “a fundamental principle of international law and an essential part of what we call Western values.” The co-chair of the European Greens, Vula Tsetsi, branded Trump’s statements as “imperialistic“.
Mouth shut, at least for the moment, at the European Commission. From the Berlaymont Palace in Brussels, no one wants to blurt out what measures the EU executive or individual member states should take to deal with the actions speculated by the president-elect: “Let’s all tone it down,” urged the spokesman for Trade Olof Gill, while chief spokeswoman Paula Pinho assured that Greenland enjoys the military mutual assistance clause enshrined in Article 42.7 of the EU Treaty, but that threats of invasion are for the time being exclusively “theoretical”.
Da Panama al Canada
As for the Panama Canal, its sovereignty “is not negotiable and is part of our history of irreversible struggle and conquest,” made clear Foreign Minister Javier Martínez-Acha, adding that “the only hands managing the canal are Panamanian and that is how it will remain,” in reference to Trump’s insinuations that it was Chinese military that managed the stretch of sea (managed for decades by Washington and handed over to Panama in 1999). Martínez-Acha also denied that the tycoon had made his government a pecuniary offer to purchase the infrastructure, which is of crucial importance to global trade.
No army, however, to take over Canada. Trump suggested that this should soon become “the 51st state” of the Star-Spangled Union. The future U.S. president says that to annexe Ottawa, Washington will only resort to “economic force.” The proposal was rejected by resigning Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau, according to whom the likelihood of his country joining the United States is the same as “a snowball’s chance in hell.”.
There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.
Workers and communities in both our countries benefit from being each other’s biggest trading and security partner.
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) January 7, 2025
Trump—who has often referred to the prime minister as a “governor“—has returned to the subject several times in recent weeks, at least since Trudeau and his Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc dined with him at Mar-a-Lago of all places over Thanksgiving weekend. However, what the Trudeau administration used to call “good-natured jokes” is evidently no longer funny.
The outgoing prime minister wrote on X that “there is not a single chance that Canada will become part of the United States,” noting that “community workers in both countries benefit from being each other’s largest trade and security partner.” Less diplomatic is Mélanie Joly, Canada’s foreign minister, who said that “President-elect Trump’s comments show a complete lack of understanding of what makes Canada a strong country.”
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
