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By Sean Rayment
Donald Trump ruled out using force to acquire Greenland as he called for immediate negotiations over his desire to purchase the island, which he described as a “big, beautiful piece of ice”.
Addressing thousands of business and political leaders at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, the US president said he was “seeking immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States”.
“People thought I would use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force. All the US is asking for is a place called Greenland,” he said. “You can say yes, and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no — and we will remember.”
Referring to the US record in the Second World War as justification for his demand, the president told the global audience: “Without us, now you’d all be speaking German — or a little Japanese, perhaps.”
He said Denmark had been overrun by Germany “after just six hours of fighting”, prompting the US to intervene “at great cost and expense”. He insisted that only the US was now fit to defend “this enormous, unsecured island”.
“You need the ownership to defend it,” Mr Trump said. “You can’t defend it on a lease. Who the hell wants to defend a licence agreement or a lease?”
Handing Greenland to the US would not represent a threat to Nato, he added, praising the alliance’s “excellent secretary general” and greeting Mark Rutte in the audience.
Earlier in the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he would not “yield” in his support for Denmark and Greenland’s right to decide their own future.
Sir Keir was responding to a claim by Mr Trump that the decision to hand the Chagos Islands archipelago to Mauritius was an act of “great stupidity”, despite the White House previously supporting the move last May.
Mr Trump repeatedly returned to his argument that the US had received a raw deal from Nato by funding the protection of other European countries. “We give so much, and we get so little in return,” he said.
He suggested that while the US was ready to defend Nato allies, that commitment might not be reciprocated. “We’re there for Nato 100 per cent. I’m not sure if they’d be there for us.”
The president did not address mutual defence, which is a founding principle of the transatlantic alliance.
In a wide-ranging speech, Mr Trump also claimed to have delivered a historic economic upturn at home and rejected what he called the “new green scam” of switching from fossil fuels to clean energy.
“I want Europe to do great, I want the UK to do great; they’re sitting on one of the greatest energy sources in the world and they don’t use it,” he said. “There are windmills all over Europe, there are windmills all over the place — and they are losers.”
He reeled off a list of what he described as US economic achievements during the first 12 months of his second term, including “virtually no inflation”, falling petrol prices and rapid economic growth.
The president claimed that under his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, “we were a dead country. Now we are the hottest country anywhere in the world.”
Mr Trump arrived late in Switzerland on Wednesday after an electrical fault on Air Force One forced him to switch planes, but he cleared his diary to address the high-powered gathering on time.
His threat at the weekend to impose punitive tariffs on eight European countries accused of blocking his claim to Greenland has dominated discussions in Davos this week.
Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, used his speech on Tuesday to warn mid-sized countries to unite in the face of US “coercion”. “Middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” he said.
Mr Trump took direct aim at Mr Carney, claiming Canada had received “a lot of freebies” from the US. “Canada lives because of the US — remember that, Mark, next time you make your statements,” he said.
Mr Carney was one of several targets in a speech lasting well over an hour. Others included Switzerland, the French president Emmanuel Macron, the outgoing Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, and the Somali-born congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
By contrast, Mr Trump said he had a “very good relationship” with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping.
