Trump won’t rule out military force to take Panama Canal and Greenland

Speaking to reporters at his private Florida club Mar-a-Lago President-elect Donald Trump refused to rule out using military coercion to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal.

It was his second time holding a news conference since winning the election in November, and less than two weeks before he takes office on 20 January.

Trump recently repeated his seemingly far-fetched suggestions that the US should take over Greenland and Canada, the latter coming hours after long-standing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation.

At the press conference, Trump said giving the Panama Canal away was a “mistake”. After a reporter asked if he could “assure the world” that he would not use military or economic coercion to take control of areas like Greenland and the Panama Canal, Trump responded: “I won’t commit to that.”

The comments mark a rejection of decades of US policy that have prioritised self-determination over territorial expansion.

Trump, a Republican, has also floated having Canada join the United States, but he said he would not use military force to do that. He did, however, explicitly mention “economic force” as a viable option. “We’re spending hundreds of billions a year to take care of Canada,” “adding that “we don’t need their cars, we don’t need their lumber, we don’t need anything they have.”

Pressed on Greenland, Trump said “I don’t know if Denmark has any legal right to it, but if they do, they should give it up because we need it for national security.” If Denmark doesn’t choose to come to a “conclusion”, he added that “I would tariff Denmark at a very high level.”

Greenland was a Danish colony until it became a self-governing territory of Denmark in 1979. In January, its prime minister Mute Egede repeated calls for the island to hold an independence referendum.

Egede has not yet commented on Trump’s recent claims, but in December said that Greenland was “not for sale and will never be for sale.”

“Drill, baby, drill”

Promising a “Golden age of America”, Trump also said he would move to try to rename the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America”, saying that has a “beautiful ring to it.”

Trump also used his press conference to complain that President Joe Biden has been undermining his transition to power, a day after the incumbent moved to ban offshore energy drilling in most federal waters.

“President Biden’s actions yesterday on offshore drilling, banning offshore drilling, will not stand. I will reverse it immediately. We’re going to drill, baby, drill.”

Biden, whose term expires in two weeks, used his authority under the federal Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect offshore areas along the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea from future oil and natural gas leasing.

All told, about 625 million acres of federal waters were withdrawn from energy exploration by Biden in a move that may require an act of Congress to undo. “I’m going to put it back on day one,” Trump told reporters. He pledged to take it to the courts “if we need to.”

Trump said Biden’s effort – part of a series of final actions in office by the Democrat’s administration – undermined his plans upon entering office.