Why Trump Wants Greenland
In 982 AD, Erik the Red was exiled from Iceland for turning his neighbors into ex-neighbors.
By which I mean, he killed them.
With nowhere to go, Erik set sail west based on rumors of an island.
But what he found wasn’t a fertile paradise. No palm trees, no sandy beaches.
Instead, it was a colossal chunk of frozen badlands—ice, snow, and a whole lot of nothing.
But Erik wasn’t just a warrior; he was a marketer.
He called this icy area "Greenland” -- a name designed to trick people into moving there.
And then he sent word back to his viking friends.
It worked.
Erik turned Greenland into a Viking migration hotspot.
Fast-forward to 2019…
Trump’s Greenland Pitch
Trump announced he wanted to buy Erik’s former viking promised land.
At first, I thought he was nuts.
Greenland is brutal. It struggles with the highest suicide rate on the planet. Alcoholism and depression are off the charts.
Winters are long, dark, and harsh, and ironically, in the short summers (with 24 hours of sunlight), nobody can sleep.
It’s circadian-rhythm hell.
Long story short, nothing happened with Trump’s announcement. Everyone forgot about it, assuming it was another one of his crazy antics.
But apparently Trump’s not giving up. He just announced AGAIN he wants the US to buy Greenland.
Is he nuts? Or is this the smartest geopolitical move on the planet?
Maybe both.
I talked all about it in my recent podcast.
Below, let’s look at the details… and why this might be a smart move.
Hint: apparently this big island of ice may hold the key to our entire global supply chain.
Buying Greenland (…Again?)
In 2019, when Trump tweeted that he wanted to buy Greenland, Denmark’s prime minister wasn’t happy.
He tweeted right back: “No, Greenland isn’t for sale.”
Why Denmark?
Technically, Greenland is an autonomous territory under the Danish crown.
Denmark foots a big chunk of the bill (hundreds of millions of dollars in annual subsidies). In exchange, they get to make the final call on Greenland’s external affairs.
But just a few days ago, Trump declared Greenland a “strategic necessity” for the U.S.
He even brought out Ken Howery—a co-founder of PayPal—to be his ambassador to Denmark.
The real reason you keep hearing about Greenland boils down to rare earth minerals.
It’s all about the gallium, germanium, antimony (yes, that’s a real thing).
And it’s not just weird metals.
Greenland’s got uranium—lots of it. If you want to run nuclear reactors or build that next big bomb (not supporting, just stating facts), you need uranium.
And here’s the thing:
China just banned exporting some of these elements to the U.S. And guess what? China controls something like 70% of the global supply. Russia has a chunk, too.
Again, Denmark technically “owns” Greenland, but they don’t have the resources (or the technology, or the money) to mine all of it.
China, however, does—and they’re already in there, scooping up mining rights through a company called Shenghe Resources, which is basically half-owned by the Chinese government.
Throw in massive oil and natural gas deposits that are now easier to access (since Greenland’s ice is melting), and you see why every superpower wants a piece of this place.
The Long Game
Look, historically, we’ve done stuff like this. The U.S. bought Alaska from Russia in 1867.
We picked up the Louisiana Purchase from France back in 1803. The U.S. Virgin Islands were once the Danish West Indies. Harry Truman tried to buy Greenland right after World War II for $100 million.
So it’s not like we haven’t gone shopping for large land masses before.
And this time, it’s strategic.
China is playing a global long game by controlling rare earth minerals.
The U.S. is trying to cut in before we lose total leverage. Greenland is the third biggest stash in the world.
That’s not a coincidence.
Either way, we’re probably going to hear a lot more about Greenland soon.
By the way…
In 2019, I tried to buy Greenland through crowdfunding.
I talk about WHY I wanted to buy it first… and how it ended (in disaster) right here on my podcast.
