The president of the United States, Donald Trump, threatened this Friday to impose tariffs on countries that . “I could impose tariffs on countries that do not support Greenland, because we need Greenland for national security,” the president said at a meeting with farmers to discuss health issues in rural areas.
Trump said these words shortly after it was learned that his special envoy for Greenland, Jeff Landry, . “I think we must reach an agreement. Finally, we are having a serious debate about what an association, a cooperation or a dialogue, a better relationship with Greenland would be like,” Landry said this Friday during an interview with the conservative channel. Fox News.
In parallel, a delegation of United States congressmen has traveled to Denmark to meet this Friday with the country’s authorities in order to discuss the Arctic island and “lower the rhetoric” of the White House, as they have declared.
Trump assured that he is in contact with NATO to try to open a negotiation path over Greenland. Asked by journalists if he would be willing to leave the Atlantic Alliance if it does not help him take over the Arctic island, he said: “NATO has been dealing with us in Greenland. We need Greenland urgently for national security. If we don’t have it, we will have a vacuum in national security, in terms of what we are doing in terms of the golden dome and all the other things,” he said just before boarding the plane to leave for his mansion in Mar-a-Lago (Florida), where he flies every weekend. “We have many investments in the military field. We have the strongest army in the world that is getting stronger and stronger. And you saw that with Venezuela. That was seen with the attack on Iran, with the possible loss of its nuclear capacity. So yes, we are talking with NATO,” he added.
Landry, who is also governor of Louisiana, has revealed that he plans to visit Greenland next March to accelerate talks that allow for a. The White House special envoy has explained that he is not interested in holding meetings with local authorities, but with Greenlandic citizens. Landry said he wants to offer Greenland’s nearly 56,000 residents opportunities to “improve their quality of life” in exchange for a greater US military presence and access to rare earth deposits. The Louisiana governor drew on his roots to describe his approach to negotiations as a strategy of “culinary diplomacy.”
“The strengthening of the Monroe Doctrine. This is something that should have happened 20 years ago,” he said on Fox, while recalling: “The Chinese have built more icebreakers in a year than the United States in the entire history of the country. They don’t build those icebreakers for fun. They build them to be able to control the Arctic. And the president knows it.”
Special Envoy to Greenland makes the case for acquisition:
“If 20 years ago we’d been having this discussion… they would say that the president is doing a great job to SECURE OUR HOMELAND. Now, because it’s President Trump, they just want to complain about…
— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends)
This week, a delegation from Denmark and Greenland traveled to Washington to . “The president has made his priority very clear: he wants the United States to acquire Greenland,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said yesterday.
The European representatives acknowledged after the meeting with the US authorities that they had not managed to change the White House’s mind about their aspirations to take over Greenland no matter what. The head of Danish diplomacy, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, even had that, who had also assured during his daily press conference that the working group that was agreed to be created bilaterally aims to “hold technical talks on the acquisition of Greenland.”
Upon his arrival in Copenhagen from Washington, Rasmussen stressed in a message on his social networks: “We have made it very clear: one cannot buy or take over Greenland. In 2026 we will be trading among the people, not with the people,” wrote the Danish Foreign Minister.
The expansionist desires of the White House are not, however, the position of the entire political class or that of the American population. That is the message that he brought to Copenhagen, which began a two-day visit to Denmark this Friday, where they were received by the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, and her Greenlandic counterpart, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, as well as by Danish deputies.
“In times of growing instability, we need our allies more than ever and this trip will send a clear message that Congress continues to stand with Denmark and NATO,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons, who heads a delegation made up of eleven congressmen and senators, including Republicans Lisa Murkowski and Thom Tillis, had stated when announcing the legislative mission. “This is a delegation that has made it clear that it does not think that we should acquire Greenland, not even by buying it,” stated, already in the Danish capital, the Republican Murkowski, senator from Alaska. As she stressed in statements to the press, the idea is to try to “lower the rhetoric” coming from the White House and make it clear that “public opinion in the United States clearly says, 75%, that it does not think that we should acquire Greenland, neither by purchase nor by annexation.”
“We want to show solidarity, that the two parties [republicano y demócrata] “They believe that Greenland should make a decision for itself about its future,” said Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who has called these “unnecessary and dangerous advances.” “We should work through NATO. “That is where we are all going to find common ground,” he insisted on the same day that the Atlantic Alliance confirmed that next Monday, its Secretary General, Mark Rutte, will meet in Brussels with the Danish Minister of Defense, Troels Lund Poulsen, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greenland, Vivian Motzfeldt, who participated on Wednesday in the meeting at the White House with the Vice President, JD Vance, and the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, to discuss the future of the island. autonomous.
They are not the only ones. Opposition in the US Congress to Trump’s desire to seize Greenland is growing. The former leader of the Republican majority, Mitch McConnell, issued a serious warning to the US president about During an intervention in Congress last Wednesday he launched an unusual criticism from the Republican bench: “Unless the president can demonstrate otherwise, the proposal [de Trump para anexionarse Groenlandia] is very simple: incinerate the hard-earned trust of loyal allies in exchange for no meaningful change in US access to the Arctic.” He added: “Pursuing this provocation would be more disastrous for the president’s legacy than a withdrawal from Afghanistan was for his predecessor.”
Several dozen military personnel and liaison officers, at the invitation of Denmark, on a “reconnaissance” mission to explore the possibilities of a broader military operation in the future, under NATO supervision. Belgium announced this Friday that next Monday it will also send an officer to the Arctic island. Meanwhile, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, has indicated that Spain will make a decision on the matter when, after “exchange” with its European partners, it has a “composition of place.”
