New Delhi: US President-elect Donald J. Trump is yet to assume the presidency, but has already made claims on the Danish territory of Greenland, of annexing Canada, reclaiming the Panama Canal and renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, all during one press conference Tuesday.
Trump, during the press conference refused to rule out the use of force or economic coercion to make Canada the 51st state of the US, or claiming Greenland under the garb of “national security” which has ruffled feathers across the Atlantic, as well as having the Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo cheekily suggest that North America should be renamed to Mexican America.
Trump’s press conference at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida saw a number of claims made on territories spanning North America, two of which are against allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)—Canada and Denmark. The day he made the proposal for Greenland, his son Donald Trump Jr. travelled to the territory for a short visit, reportedly to shoot for a podcast.
Trump indicated that he would be open to using economic force to annex Canada, stating that the two countries together would “really be something” while alleging that the US is spending “hundreds of billions a year” to subsidise their ally to the North.
“Canada and the United States, that would really be something. You get rid of that artificially drawn line and you take a look at what that looks like and it would also be much better for national security. We basically protect Canada,” declared Trump at the press conference.
The leaders of both Canada and Denmark have rebuffed Trump’s statements regarding taking ownership of their territories. Furthermore, after Trump made the proposal to rename the Gulf of Mexico—the ocean basin on the margins of the Atlantic Ocean—as the Gulf of America, Mexican president Sheinbaum Pardo during a Wednesday morning press conference, showcased a world map dating from 1607, which labelled North America as Mexican America.
“It looks so pretty, no?” quipped Sheinbaum Pardo before showing the map, which was created 169 years before the foundation of the United States of America, and had labelled the ocean basin as the Gulf of Mexico.
Trump also laid claim to the Panama Canal, citing Chinese “control” over the waterways and national security for reclaiming it. The Panama Canal has a contentious history, but was handed over to the control of Panama in 1999, following a treaty signed by President James “Jimmy” Earl Carter Jr. in 1979.
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On Greenland
Trump’s claims on Greenland are not new. During his first presidency, Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton had assembled a small team headed by Fiona Hill to brainstorm ideas on how the US could acquire the territory from Denmark, according to The New York Times.
The American newspaper reported that Ronald S. Lauder, the heir of Estée Lauder, had brought it up with Trump since the beginning of his first presidency. The worry at the time was the expanding influence of China in the Arctic, and with the ice-melting, Greenland would become strategically placed in the Northwest Passage, connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean.
The second argument for it was made succinctly by Trump Jr. on his return from Greenland Tuesday, telling a US news channel that Denmark has prevented the territory “from utilising the great natural resources they have, whether that’s coal, uranium, other rare earth minerals, gold or diamonds.”
The Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen rebuffed the idea, declaring that Greenland belonged to Greenlanders. The Arctic Island—the largest in the world—is home to the US’s Pituffik Space Base.
In 1946, the then US President Harry S. Truman proposed to buy the island for $100 million in gold from Denmark, a secret offer made in the early days of the Cold War or trade parts of Greenland with military value with land from Alaska. However, though Truman’s proposals did not go far, the US nevertheless gained military bases in the Arctic Island.
The 51st state of the US—Canada
Trump took a jab at the outgoing Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, in December 2024, referring to the leader as the “governor of the Great State of Canada” in reference to a meeting the two held at Mar-a-Lago in the final weeks of November.
Trudeau had made the trip down to Trump’s Florida base after the President-elect made promises to impose tariffs of up to 25 percent on all goods imported from Canada. Almost 75 percent of all of Ottawa’s exports are to the US, and the two countries have built robust interdependent supply chains on a number of goods, especially after the establishment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
On Tuesday, Trump took aim at the trade deficit with Canada, claiming that it is a subsidy of roughly $200 billion, with 20 percent of cars sold in the US, coming from its Northern neighbour. Trudeau and Trump have had a difficult relationship, with the latter famously being surrounded by the other leaders of the G7 during the leaders’ summit hosted in Quebec.
“We do not need their cars. They make 20 percent of our cars, we do not need that, I would rather make that in Detroit. We do not need their lumber. We have massive fields of lumber, we do not need them…We do not need anything they have. We do not need their dairy products…So why are we losing $200 billion a year and more to protect Canada?” asserted Trump during the press conference at Mar-a-Lago.
The US President-elect claimed that the US military is at the “disposal” of Canada, and for all of these things, he wondered why it was not a state or a part of the country.
However, Trudeau in a post on X, in response to Trump’s statements to the press, wrote: “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States. Workers and communities in both our countries benefit from being each other’s biggest trading and security partner.”
Pierre Poilievre, the Leader of the Official Opposition in Canada and the Conservatives pushed back against Trump’s statement, promising to put “Canada first”. The opposition leader is leading in the polls scheduled to be held sometime this year.
Chinese control over the Panama Canal
The 82-km-long Panama Canal, connecting the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean, has also become a target of the President-elect. Constructed between 1904 and 1914, the canal has a contentious history. In 1903, the US administration, quickly recognising the independence of Panama from Colombia, dispatched American warships to both Panama City on the Pacific Ocean and Colón in the Atlantic Ocean, to prevent any Colombian effort to recapture the territory of the newly formed Central American country.
President Theodore Roosevelt’s administration signed a treaty with the newly formed country for a one-time payment of $10 million and an annual annuity of $250,000 to maintain control over the wide strip of land where the canal was eventually built.
However, in 1978 the Carter administration opened negotiations with the Panamanians, which resulted in two treaties—one, a treaty of permanent neutrality, which gave the US rights to send its military if the neutrality of the canal is threatened; and two, which gave the ownership of the canal to the government of Panama in 1999.
“Look, the Panama Canal is vital to our country. It is being operated by China. China! We gave the Panama Canal to Panama, we did not give it to China. They abused it, they abused the gift. It should never have been made. Giving the Panama Canal is why Jimmy Carter lost the election in my opinion,” said Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
The President-elect further added that the Panamanian administration is charging US ships far more than those from other countries, asserting that China has a big role to play in the Central American country at the moment. Trump had falsely claimed that Chinese soldiers are operating the canal.
The government of Panama has rebuffed Trump’s claims over the canal, claiming that its sovereignty over the waterway is “non-negotiable”.
In the past the President of Panama José Raúl Mulino has said that there are “no Chinese soldiers in the canal, for the love of God!”.
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