Leaders from both Greenland and Panama issued messages on Wednesday fervently rejecting the comments made by President Donald Trump during his address to Congress in which he again reiterated his ambitions to grab hold of the strategically important areas.
Trump has made clear he intends to ‘acquire’ both Greenland and the Panama Canal, and previously refused to rule out military intervention to achieve his expansionist goals.
In his joint address to Congress, the president said his administration had already taken steps to ‘take back’ the Panama Canal and reiterated his push to acquire Greenland, which is currently a territory of Denmark.
TRUMP LOOKS EAST
Trump spoke directly to Greenland in his address on Tuesday night and said, ‘We strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America.’
‘We will keep you safe. We will make you rich. And together we will take Greenland to heights like you have never thought possible before,’ he added.
Trump then said his administration was ‘working with everybody involved to try to get it.’
‘We need it really for international world security. And I think we’re going to get it,’ he continued. ‘One way or the other, we’re going to get it.’
GREENLAND’S RESPONSE
Greenland Prime Minister Múte Egede on Wednesday made clear he is neither interested in American nor Danish ownership.
‘We do not want to be Americans, nor Danes, we are Kalaallit (Greenlanders). The Americans and their leader must understand that,’ Egede said in a post on Facebook translated by Reuters.
‘We are not for sale and cannot be taken. Our future is determined by us in Greenland,’ he added.
TRUMP LOOKS SOUTH
Trump’s comments regarding the Panama Canal on Tuesday night were just as direct when he said, ‘My administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal.’
‘We’ve already started doing it,’ he added.
Trump has claimed China has taken over the important waterway as a Hong Kong-based company operates ports on either end of the canal — which the administration has claimed could cut off the U.S. from the canal if Beijing directed it to.
However, Panama has repeatedly rejected the claim that China runs the canal.
‘Just today, a large American company announced they are buying both ports around the Panama Canal and lots of other things having to do with the Panama Canal and a couple of other canals,’ Trump said.
Trump’s comments were in reference to a $23 billion BlackRock Inc.-TiL Consortium deal made with Hutchison Port Holdings, the Hong Kong conglomerate, announced on Tuesday.
The consortium, made up of BlackRock Inc., Global Infrastructure Partners and Terminal Investment Limited, would acquire ‘90% interests in Panama Ports Company (the ‘PPC Transaction’), which owns and operates the ports of Balboa and Cristobal in Panama,’ according to a Tuesday press release.
PANAMA’S RESPONSE
But Panama’s president took issue with Trump’s comments saying in part, ‘Once again, President Trump, is lying.’
‘The Panama Canal is not in the process of being restored, and this is certainly not the task that was even discussed in our conversations with [Secretary of State] Rubio or anyone else,’ Panama President José Raúl Mulino said in a post on X. ‘I reject, on behalf of Panama and all Panamanians, this new affront to the truth and to our dignity as a nation.’
‘It has nothing to do with the ‘recovery of the Canal’ or with tarnishing our national sovereignty,’ he added. ‘The Canal is Panamanian and will continue to be Panamanian!’