PALM BEACH, Florida: President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday said he would not rule out the use of military force to seize control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, as he declared US control of both to be vital to American national security.
\nSpeaking to reporters less than two weeks before he takes office on Jan. 20 and as a delegation of aides and advisers that includes Donald Trump Jr. is in Greenland, Trump left open the use of the American military to secure both territories. Trump\u2019s intention marks a rejection of decades of US policy that has prioritized self-determination over territorial expansion.
\n\u201cI\u2019m not going to commit to that,\u201d Trump said, when asked if he would rule out the use of the military. \u201cIt might be that you\u2019ll have to do something. The Panama Canal is vital to our country.\u201d He added, \u201cWe need Greenland for national security purposes.\u201d
\nGreenland, home to a large US military base, is an autonomous territory of Denmark, a longtime US ally and a founding member of NATO. Trump cast doubts on the legitimacy of Denmark\u2019s claim to Greenland.
\nThe Panama Canal has been solely controlled by the eponymous country for more than 25 years. The US returned the Panama Canal Zone to the country in 1979 and ended its joint partnership in controlling the strategic waterway in 1999.
\nAddressing Trump\u2019s comments in an interview with Danish broadcaster TV2, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the United States Denmark\u2019s \u201cmost important and closest ally,\u201d and that she did not believe that the United States will use military or economic power to secure control over Greenland.
\nFrederiksen repeated that she welcomed the United States taking a greater interest in the Arctic region, but that it would \u201chave to be done in a way that is respectful of the Greenlandic people,\u201d she said.
\n\u201cAt the same time, it must be done in a way that allows Denmark and the United States to still cooperate in, among other things, NATO,\u201d Frederiksen said.
\nEarlier, Trump posted a video of his private plane landing in Nuuk, the Arctic territory\u2019s capital, in a landscape of snow-capped peaks and fjords.
\n\u201cDon Jr. and my Reps landing in Greenland,\u201d Trump wrote. \u201cThe reception has been great. They, and the Free World, need safety, security, strength, and PEACE! This is a deal that must happen. MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!\u201d
\nIn a statement, Greenland\u2019s government said Donald Trump Jr.\u2019s visit was taking place \u201cas a private individual\u201d and not as an official visit, and Greenlandic representatives would not meet with him.
\nTrump, a Republican, has also floated having Canada join the United States as the 51st state. He said Tuesday that he would not use military force to invade the country, which is home to more than 40 million people and is a founding NATO partner.
\nInstead, he said, he would would rely on \u201ceconomic force\u201d as he cast the US trade deficit with Canada \u2014 a natural resource-rich nation that provides the US with commodities like crude oil and petroleum \u2014 as a subsidy that would be coming to an end.
\nCanadian leaders fired back after earlier dismissing Trump\u2019s rhetoric as a joke.
\n\u201cPresident-elect Trump\u2019s comments show a complete lack of understanding of what makes Canada a strong country. Our economy is strong. Our people are strong. We will never back down in the face of threats,\u201d Canadian Foreign Minister M\u00e9lanie Joly said in a post on X.
\nJustin Trudeau, the country\u2019s outgoing prime minister, was even more blunt.
\n\u201cThere isn\u2019t a snowball\u2019s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States,\u201d he wrote.
\nPromising a \u201cGolden age of America,\u201d Trump also said he would move to try to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the \u201cGulf of America,\u201d saying that has a \u201cbeautiful ring to it.\u201d
\nHe also said he believes that NATO should dramatically increase its spending targets, with members of the trans-Atlantic alliance committing to spend at least 5 percent of their GDPs on defense spending, up from the current 2 percent.
\nIn June, NATO announced a record 23 of its 32 member nations were on track to hit that target as Russia\u2019s ongoing war in Ukraine has raised the threat of expanding conflict in Europe.
\nTrump also used his press conference to complain that President Joe Biden was undermining his transition to power a day after the incumbent moved to ban offshore energy drilling in most federal waters.
\nBiden, 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\u2019s 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.
\n\u201cI\u2019m going to put it back on day one,\u201d Trump told reporters. He pledged to take it to the courts \u201cif we need to.\u201d
\nTrump said Biden\u2019s effort \u2014 part of a series of final actions in office by the Democrat\u2019s administration \u2014 was undermining his plans for once he\u2019s in office.
\n\u201cYou know, they told me that, we\u2019re going to do everything possible to make this transition to the new administration very smooth,\u201d Trump said. \u201cIt\u2019s not smooth.\u201d
\nBut Biden\u2019s team has extended access and courtesies to the Trump team that the Republican former president initially denied Biden after his 2020 election victory. Trump incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles told Axios in an interview published Monday that Biden chief of staff Jeff Zients \u201chas been very helpful.\u201d
\nIn extended remarks, Trump also railed against the work of special counsel Jack Smith, who oversaw now-dropped prosecutions over his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and possession of classified documents after he left office in 2021. The Justice Department is expected to soon release a report from Smith summarizing his investigation after the criminal cases were forced to an end by Trump\u2019s victory in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PALM BEACH, Florida: President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday said he would not rule out the use of military force to seize control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, as he declared US control of both to be vital to American national security. Speaking to reporters less than two weeks before he takes office on Jan. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":75346,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75347,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75333\/revisions\/75347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}