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Reactions have been strong to President-elect Donald Trump’s statements that Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal should all be part of the United States.
Hours after a sprawling news conference on Tuesday where Trump said he would not rule out the use of military force to claim Greenland from Denmark and the Panama Canal from Panama and that U.S. economic support for Canada was only justified if it was a state, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on X, “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.”
Responding to Trump’s claim that the U.S. doesn’t need Canadian cars, lumber or dairy and should abandon its partnership with the country to build ice-breaking ships, Trudeau wrote Tuesday, “Workers and communities in both our countries benefit from being each other’s biggest trading and security partner.”
On Tuesday, Trump reiterated a stance from his first term in office — that Greenland is critical for U.S. national security and that Denmark should sell the territory to the United States or expect to be tariffed “at a very high level.”
“Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in an interview with Danish broadcaster TV2 in response to the Trump news conference, where the president-elect said his son Donald Trump Jr., was in the country to help further his plan. “There is a lot of support among the people of Greenland that Greenland is not for sale and will not be in the future either.”
Meanwhile Tuesday, Panamanian Foreign Minister Javier Martínez-Acha Vásquez said at a news conference: “The sovereignty of our canal is nonnegotiable and is part of our history of struggle and an irreversible conquest. Let it be clear: The canal belongs to the Panamanians, and it will continue to be that way.”
Multiple Democratic members of Congress took to X to condemn Trump’s expansionist comments.
“Trump is talking about Greenland and Canada like they are golf courses he wants to buy,” Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., wrote on X. “This isn’t a serious foreign policy strategy; it’s whimsical imperialism. Instead of bullying our partners, let’s work with them to address the substantial challenges facing our world.”
“House Democrats are focused on lowering the high cost of living in America. Not invading Greenland,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., wrote on X.
“The American people do not want to go to war for Greenland,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., wrote on X.
While many GOP Congressional leaders did not comment, Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., expressed his support.
“Strong borders. The Panama Canal. The Gulf of America. Greenland,” he wrote on X. “Our country’s best days are ahead.”
During a press briefing on Wednesday afternoon, White House national security spokesman John Kirby declined to directly engage with Trump’s expantionist desires.
"I need to refrain from putting a qualitative assessment of what the president-elect is saying and why he’s saying it … and the message that it might be sending," Kirby said. "These are his foreign policy statements … to characterize on his own. And it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to do that."
"The only thing I’d point you to is what the foreign leaders, you know, involved in all the places have said themselves," Kirby continued. "I think it’s pretty apparent what their views of some of these policy pronouncements are, but it would not be appropriate for us to weigh in and cast judgement."
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum also responded to Trump’s pitch to rename the Gulf of Mexico to "Gulf of America" on Wednesday. At her daily press briefing, she stood in front of a map and sarcastically argued that North America should be renamed “América Mexicana,” or “Mexican America,” because a founding document dating from 1814 that preceded Mexico’s constitution referred to it that way.
“That sounds nice, no?” she added. She also noted that the Gulf of Mexico had been named that way since 1607.
Spectrum News’ Joseph Konig and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
