Trump calls for buying Greenland after seeing Canada and the Panama Canal

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — First it was Canadathereafter The Panama Canal. Now, Donald Trump again wishes Greenland.

The president-elect renews without success calls he made in his first term for the United States to buy Greenland from Denmark, adding to the list of allied countries with which he is picking fights even before he takes office on January 20.

In a Sunday announcement naming his ambassador to Denmark, Trump wrote that “For the purposes of national security and freedom throughout the world, the United States feels that ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”

Trump again has designs on Greenland after the president-elect suggested over the weekend that the United States could regain control of the Panama Canal if nothing is done to ease the rising shipping costs required to use the waterway that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

He has also proposed that Canada become the 51st US state and referred to the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “governor” of “the great state of Canada”.

Greenland, the world’s largest island, lies between the Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic Ocean. 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 struggle for freedom.”

Trump canceled a visit to Denmark in 2019 after his offer to buy Greenland was rejected by Copenhagen, and in the end came to nothing.

He also suggested on Sunday that the US is being “ripped off” by the Panama Canal.

“If the principles, both moral and legal, of this generous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand the return of the Panama Canal to the United States, in full, quickly and without question,” he said.

President of Panama Jose Raul Mulino responded in a video that “every square meter of the canal belongs to Panama and will continue to do so,” but Trump fired back on his social media: “We’ll see!”

The president-elect also posted a photo of an American flag planted in the Canal Zone under the phrase “Welcome to America’s Canal!”

The United States built the canal in the early 1900s, but ceded control to Panama on December 31, 1999, under a treaty signed in 1977 by Pres Jimmy Carter.

The canal depends on reservoirs, which were hit by a drought in 2023 that forced it to significantly reduce the number of daily slots for ships to cross. With fewer ships, administrators also increased the fees shippers are charged to reserve slots to use the canal.

The Greenland and Panama flare-ups followed Trump recently writing that “Canadians want Canada to be the 51st state” and offering a photo of himself atop a mountaintop surveying surrounding territory next to a Canadian flag.

Trudeau suggested Trump was joking to annex his country, but the pair recently met at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida to discuss Trump’s threats to impose a rate of 25%. on all Canadian goods.