Danes, Greenland: Sovereignty Not Negotiable After Trump Tariff Reversal
- Greenland's Prime Minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, has stated that while Greenland is open to discussing a revised partnership, its sovereignty remains non-negotiable.
Leaders of Denmark and Greenland insisted today that the island’s sovereignty was non-negotiable after US President Donald Trump said he had agreed with the NATO chief on the framework of a future Arctic security deal that Trump said would grant the US “total access” to the territory.
Much about the potential deal remained unclear, though Trump said in a Fox Business interview that “we’re going to have total access to Greenland,” a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark. He added that “we’re going to have all the military access we want”.
NATO spokesperson Allison Hart said the alliance’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, did not propose any “compromise to sovereignty” in discussions with Trump.
Trump, who has repeatedly argued that the US needed Greenland to counter threats from Russia and China, on Wednesday abruptly scrapped the tariffs he had threatened to impose on eight European nations to press for US control over Greenland. It was a dramatic reversal hours after he insisted he wanted to get the island “including right, title and ownership” – though he also said he would not use force.
Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen voiced guarded relief, but he said he knew no concrete details of the agreement Trump cited.
“I don’t know what there is in the agreement, or the deal about my country,” he told reporters.
Trump called it a “framework of a future deal” that, if completed, would also allow the United States to install an element of his “Golden Dome,” part of a multibillion dollar missile defense system, in Greenland.
