Pinkerton: Trump Wants to Make Greenland Great Again

An economic boom is coming. Yes, Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., is in disarray, but that’s nothing new. What is new, since the November election, is the surging spirit of enterprise out beyond the Beltway and all across the nation. It will change America for the richer. Indeed, it could well expand America for the larger. Just on December 22, President-elect Donald followed through on a plan that Breitbart News has been following for five years–a possible acquisition of Greenland. 

We see positive leading indicators all over: in surveys measuring the surging confidence of both small business and big business; in improving prospects for venture capital; in Softbank’s announcement that it will invest another $100 billion in the U.S. economy. As Elon Musk, who just by himself accounts for a big chunk of the economy, tweeted on December 13, “Biggest vibe shift I’ve ever seen.”

But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.  Trump is taking command even before he is formally sworn back into the presidency. In a December 10 “Truth,” he announced a bold new policy:

Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!

Immediately, Musk responded, “This is awesome.”

Of course, Trump himself has been rocking on for decades. As he said in his 1987 best-seller, The Art of the Deal, “I like thinking big. I always have.”

Trump’s Victory Has America Thinking Big Again

Now others are thinking big, too, with renewed hope. Seeking to free entrepreneurs and workers from the regulatory death grip of the Malthusians and NIMBYs, Republicans in Congress have long been pushing for permitting reform, although they’ve been blocked by the Biden-Harris administration.  (The incumbent Democratic administration does, however, get excited about building windmills on federal land, ignoring the opinion of locals.)

But soon, Republicans will have a “trifecta” with GOP control of the White House, Senate, and House, which should pave the way for progress on permitting reform, as well as other pro-growth policies.

Moreover, the Supreme Court, beefed up by three Trump-appointed conservatives, is on board. In recent years, the high court has pushed back on excessive regulation, and seems destined to push back still more.

One immediate beneficiary is likely to be Musk himself. His SpaceX has been harassed by federal regulators, especially since he emerged as a major Trump supporter. Happily, on December 12, one of those harassers, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, announced he would be stepping down.   

So, for at least the next four years, Musk’s epochal rocket business is safe from federal heavy-handedness, free to launch from the newly renamed Starbase, Texas.

Yet the once and future commander-in-chief seeks more than legislative fixes and legal rulings, as important as they are. He is bringing with him a way way thinking about economic opportunities, which we might call the Art of the Really Big Deal.

To be sure, it’s not entirely new, insofar as Trump had the same idea in his 45 presidency. Yet as we remember, the Swamp and the Deep State fought him at every turn. And since 2021, they’ve done their best to blot out all their memories of Trump’s first term.

But Trump was always coming back for more. In July, this author wrote that the prospective 47 presidency would focus on imaginative economic development: “Trump will be looking for new kinds of deals, beyond the metes and bounds of the presidency and precedent.”

That’s Trump’s way. He’s hands-on, operating on instinct—his gut feeling is that if he gets involved, he can make things happen. Yes, it’s work, and yet as he also said in his best-seller of 37 years ago, “Much more often than you’d think, sheer persistence is the difference between success and failure.”

Happily, others, too, are putting in the persistence. For example, Trump-endorsed Bernie Moreno, now the Republican senator-elect from Ohio, gave Breitbart News the scoop on his imaginative plan to “repatriate” Stellantis and its auto production and jobs back to the United States. Stellantis includes the former Chrysler, which the Obama administration handed off to Fiat in Italy. (Last fall, Trump himself put forth a similar strategy for German automakers–make the cars in the USA.)

Other industries, too, look to come roaring back. In his August acceptance speech to the Republican National Convention, Trump spoke of oil as “liquid gold under our feet.”  That “gold” is so abundant that, according to the Institute for Energy Research, its total value ranks in the hundreds of trillions of dollars.  Yes, that’s right: We have enough oil wealth to pay off the national debt, and then some.  We just need the leeway to go and get it. Of course, it’s not just oil that beckons. We also have massive amounts—centuries’ worth—of natural gas and coal. 

A Great Big Country Could Get Bigger and Greater

While we’re on the subject of natural resources, we might look to some tantalizing clues as to the next big thing. “I’m going to make a prediction,” said Fox News’ Dana Perino on December 10. “I actually think that the United States might make some sort of [land] purchase.”

Some thought Perino was thinking of Panama, about which Trump is talking tough. But that seems to be more a matter of negotiating down freight-transit rates through the Panama Canal–which the U.S. built and once owned until Jimmy Carter gave it away in 1977, with Sen. Joe Biden voting with Carter, of course–as opposed to any kind of land-purchase. 

Also, Trump has quipped, repeatedly, about Canada as a possible fifty-first state; in fact, he’s brought up the idea so often that maybe he’s not joking. Yet still, Canada has a population of 40 million; it’s a big pill to swallow. (And do we want to risk the oh-so-woke self-declared “proud feminist” Justin Trudeau ending up in charge of anything here?)

Yet by raising the prospect of annexing Canada, maybe Trump has carving out political space for the real move, which he just announced–a different big real estate deal, nearby in the north: Greenland, a near-continent (836,000 square miles, about the same size as Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase) close to the Arctic. It’s  owned by Denmark, but the ecology-minded Danes aren’t currently getting much from it.  Greenland is home to a mere 56,000 people; its population density is 1/900 of the United States.  So, for those who don’t mind the cold, Greenland offers plenty of room for expansion, including all the natural riches that have never been surveyed, let alone extracted.

Yet there’s a simple enough way of thinking about the potential value of territory: For sure, there’s something valuable under every square mile of the earth’s surface–so the more land a nation possesses, the more there is to be found underneath it–it’s just a question of digging deep enough. So, now we see why large countries, such as Canada and Russia, have so much natural wealth. They have the quantity of territory. (The Canadians, like the Danes, are eco-minded, and so they have chosen not to do much with their assets.)

The idea of the U.S. acquiring Greenland had been discussed in past centuries, and but during Trump’s first term, it jumped to attention. Intrigued by the prospect, Sarah Palin–as a former Alaska governor, one who knows a lot about icy expanses–wrote exclusively about it for Breitbart News:

If President Trump can pull off another deal like that, I say God bless him! Greenland’s vast arctic expanse—which, at over 800,000 square miles, is more than a quarter the size of the U.S. Lower 48—is surely another Alaska in terms of untapped wealth.

In other words, Greenland is a great place to dig, baby, dig, as well, as drill, baby, drill.

Making Greenland Great Again

For its part, Denmark has a curious relationship with this territory. On the one hand, the Danes like owning Greenland. On the other hand, they don’t want to do anything with it. They see it as a nature preserve. To put the matter in Trumpian terms, Greenland is an under-leveraged asset.

And now Trump is making his move. Call it MGG–Make Greenland Great. But could the Danes be persuaded to give it up? Just on December 23, Greenland’s chief minister declared, “Greenland is not for sale.”

Here’s where the hard-bargaining could start: The Europeans have long relied on the U.S. for their defense, a reliance made all the more acute since the Russian attack on Ukraine.

For literally decades, Trump has said the European counties should spend more on their own defense, and yet they have barely responded. Now Trump is back, more powerful than ever. Just on December 20, we learned he is demanding that NATO countries spend five percent of their GDP on defense–that’s two or three times what most of them spend currently. 

So, if the European countries can’t/won’t come up with that sort of cash from their general revenues (and the Danes have been particularly reluctant) what will they do? Fearing that Trump means what he says–that is, he aims high and drives a hard bargain–they’ll have to liquidate assets.

This is the artful deal Trump sees: The U.S. taking Greenland in compensation for continuing to defend Europe. Greenland’s natural resources are worth many trillions; future drillers and diggers won’t care that it’s cold and distant. As Alaska proves, where there’s value, there’ll be value-extractors.

Indeed, there’ll also be plenty of tourists–and others, such as preppers–who actually prefer the isolation.

Greenland is big enough to have room for all of that, plus, perhaps, a casino or two. Yes, the right kind of development could MGGA—Make Greenland Great Again.

It all fits into Trump’s overall goal of Making America Great Again. If he can get Greenland, it would be a territorial acquisition on a par with Jefferson’s Purchase or President Andrew Johnson buying Alaska.

Then and now, so much winning.