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Will Weissert, Associated Press Will Weissert, Associated Press
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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — First it was Canada, then the Panama Canal. Now, Donald Trump again wants Greenland.
The president-elect is renewing unsuccessful calls he made during his first term for the U.S. to buy Greenland from Denmark, adding to the list of allied countries with which he’s picking fights even before taking office on Jan. 20.
WATCH: Greenland unveils draft constitution in push for complete independence from Danish control
In a Sunday announcement naming his ambassador to Denmark, Trump wrote that, “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
Trump again having designs on Greenland comes after the president-elect suggested over the weekend that the U.S. could retake control of the Panama Canal if something isn’t done to ease rising shipping costs required for using the waterway linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
He’s also been suggesting that Canada become the 51st U.S. state and referred to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “governor” of the “Great State of Canada.”
Greenland, the world’s largest island, sits between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. It is 80 percent covered by an ice sheet and is home to a large U.S. 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 U.S. 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 fight for freedom.”
Trump canceled a 2019 visit to Denmark after his offer to buy Greenland was rejected by Copenhagen, and ultimately came to nothing.
READ MORE: Danish leader speaks with Trump amid Greenland dispute
He also suggested Sunday that the U.S. is getting “ripped off” at the Panama Canal.
“If the principles, both moral and legal, of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America, in full, quickly and without question,” he said.
Panama President José Raúl Mulino responded in a video that “every square meter of the canal belongs to Panama and will continue to,” but Trump fired back on his social media site, “We’ll see about that!”
The president-elect also posted a picture of a U.S. flag planted in the canal zone under the phrase, “Welcome to the United States Canal!”
The United States built the canal in the early 1900s but relinquished control to Panama on Dec. 31, 1999, under a treaty signed in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter.
The canal depends on reservoirs that were hit by 2023 droughts that forced it to substantially reduce the number of daily slots for crossing ships. With fewer ships, administrators also increased the fees that shippers are charged to reserve slots to use the canal.
The Greenland and Panama flareups followed Trump recently posting that “Canadians want Canada to become the 51st State” and offering an image of himself superimposed on a mountaintop surveying surrounding territory next to a Canadian flag.
Trudeau suggested that Trump was joking about annexing his country, but the pair met recently at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida to discuss Trump’s threats to impose a 25 percent tariff on all Canadian goods.
Left: FILE PHOTO: Glacial ice from the Greenland Ice Sheet flows around mountains into the ocean on the east coast of Greenland, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart
By Malcolm Brabant
By Seth Borenstein, Associated Press
By Maddie Burakoff, Associated Press
By Associated Press
Will Weissert, Associated Press Will Weissert, Associated Press
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