Trump’s Wish to Control Greenland and Panama Canal: Not a Joke This Time
In recent days the president-elect has called for asserting U.S. control over the Panama Canal and Greenland, showing that his “America First” philosophy has an expansionist dimension.


President-elect Donald J. Trump has accused Panama of price-gouging American ships traversing the Panama Canal, and suggested that unless that changed, he would abandon the decades-old treaty that returned all control of the canal zone to Panama. Federico Rios for The New York Times

By David E. Sanger and Lisa Friedman
David E. Sanger has covered five American presidents and writes often on the revival of superpower conflict. Lisa Friedman covers a range of environmental and climate change challenges.
Dec. 23, 2024
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Over the past two days, President-elect Donald J. Trump has made clear that he has designs for American territorial expansion, declaring that the United States has both security concerns and commercial interests that can best be addressed by bringing the Panama Canal and Greenland under American control or outright ownership. ... Mr. Trump’s tone has had none of the trolling jocularity that surrounded his repeated suggestions in recent weeks that Canada should become America’s “51st state,” including his social media references to the country’s beleaguered prime minister as “Governor Justin Trudeau.”

Instead, while naming a new ambassador to Denmark — which controls Greenland’s foreign and defense affairs — Mr. Trump made clear on Sunday that his first-term offer to buy the landmass could, in the coming term, become a deal the Danes cannot refuse. ... He appears to covet Greenland both for its strategic location at a time when the melting of Arctic ice is opening new commercial and naval competition and for its reserves of rare earth minerals needed for advanced technology.

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Mr. Trump’s desire for Greenland was made explicit in the first term, when a wealthy New York friend of his, Ronald S. Lauder, the New York cosmetics heir, put the idea in his head. ... In the Trump White House in 2019, the National Security Council was suddenly delving into the details of how the United States would pull off a land acquisition of that size. Mr. Trump kept pressing the point with Denmark, which consistently rebuffed him.

Mr. Trump was not the first president to make the case: Harry S. Truman wanted to buy Greenland after World War II, as part of a Cold War strategy for boxing out Soviet forces. Mr. Trump can make a parallel argument, especially as Russia, China and the United States jockey for control of Arctic routes for commercial shipping and naval assets.

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David E. Sanger covers the Biden administration and national security. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written several books on challenges to American national security. More about David E. Sanger

Lisa Friedman is a Times reporter who writes about how governments are addressing climate change and the effects of those policies on communities. More about Lisa Friedman

A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 24, 2024, Section A, Page 18 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump’s Wish to Control Greenland and Panama Canal: This Time It’s Not a Joke. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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