President Donald Trump said on Jan. 22 that the United States is negotiating an arrangement to secure full access to Greenland with no payment in return and unconstrained by any time limit.
The president has described U.S control of the Arctic island as essential to both national and international security.
“There’s no end, there’s no time limit,” Trump said. “We’re not doing a 99-year or a 10-year [deal] or anything else.”
Trump said that the deal would provide broad U.S. military access to Greenland and reiterated his plans for the construction of a “Golden Dome” missile defense shield that he said would be made in the United States.
“The Secretary General had a very productive meeting with President Trump during which they discussed the critical significance of security in the Arctic region to all Allies, including the United States,” NATO spokesperson Allison Hart said in a Jan. 21 emailed statement.
Hart said details of the framework deal remained sparse and were still being negotiated.
“Discussions among NATO Allies on the framework the President referenced will focus on ensuring Arctic security through the collective efforts of Allies, especially the seven Arctic Allies,” she said. “Negotiations between Denmark, Greenland, and the United States will go forward aimed at ensuring that Russia and China never gain a foothold—economically or militarily—in Greenland.”
Rutte, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Jan. 21, said Trump was right to focus on Russian and Chinese activity in the region as warming temperatures and melting ice open new shipping corridors.
“We need to defend the Arctic,” Rutte said.
Trump later announced what he described as a prospective deal in a Truth Social post and described the framework as beneficial for both the United States and the NATO alliance.
Tariff Threat Pulled Back After Greenland Progress
After signaling progress on a Greenland arrangement following his meeting with Rutte, Trump retreated from his threat to impose new tariffs on European countries that opposed his push for U.S. control of the Arctic island.“Based upon this understanding, I will not be imposing the Tariffs that were scheduled to go into effect on February 1st,” he wrote.
“By threatening the territorial integrity and sovereignty of an EU member state and by using tariffs as a coercive instrument, the US is undermining the stability and predictability of EU-US trade relations,” Bernd Lange, chair of the European Parliament’s International Trade Committee and the standing rapporteur for the United States, said in a statement.
The semiautonomous Danish territory is adjacent to key sea lanes, including emerging trans-Arctic shipping corridors, and is rich in critical minerals and rare-earth elements.
Trump said he believes the United States is the only country that’s in a position to secure Greenland in the face of potential threats from adversaries and that U.S. control would “greatly enhance” the security of the entire NATO alliance.
The president has also tied Greenland directly to his planned Golden Dome missile defense system, which he has said could be operational before his term ends in 2029.
Greenland’s location could prove critical in a nuclear conflict, as some intercontinental ballistic missiles from Russia and China would likely travel along Arctic flight paths on the shortest trajectories to the United States, and vice versa.
“If there is a war, much of the action will take place on that piece of ice,” Trump said at the World Economic Forum this week. “Think of it: Those missiles would be flying right over the center.”
The United States already maintains a key installation at Pituffik Space Force Base in Greenland, which houses early-warning radar systems designed to detect and track ballistic missile launches over the Arctic.
