Trump Could Rent Greenland Rather Than Buying It, Bloomberg Columnist Suggests

Although President-elect Donald Trump has not yet officially moved to the White House, he is already outlining his foreign relations priorities, which include expanding the country's territory into Greenland, currently part of Denmark's kingdom and a land he has tried to acquire throughout his first term. Trump even refused to commit to not use economic or military force to take control of it on Tuesday. But while the Danish Prime Minister has asserted Greenland is not for sale, a Bloomberg analyst suggests Trump may be able to rent it.

There is no doubt why Greenland has caught the U.S.' attention throughout the years— with the States even making a bid to acquire it from Denmark for $100 million after World War II. The self-ruling territory is roughly as large as Alaska and Texas combined, it contains 7% of the world's freshwater, and its undeveloped oil and gas resources are estimated to be the third-largest in the Arctic.

But while the U.S. wants to take advantage of the land, Bloomberg columnist Liam Denning suggests that owning it may not be necessary. Instead, renting parts of the land may do just the trick.

"Rather than suppress Greenland's autonomous instincts, the U.S. can leverage them to secure what it wants," Denning writes.

"Greenland's dreams of independence face harsh realities: limited population and infrastructure in a vast wilderness and lack of capital and mining expertise. Plus, an Arctic neighborhood that is getting more dangerous," he continued.

That is why the columnist suggests making an agreement with Greenland to defend its autonomy with the condition of "avoiding entanglements" with the U.S.' biggest rivals, China and Russia, who have also expressed interest in Arctic regions.

By reaching this agreement, the U.S. could strengthen the territory's aspirations by helping to develop its resources and offering revenues to support "greater economic autonomy," Denning said. That would include direct financing and long-term contracts to spur mine development, as well as companies and workers with deep experience in developing Arctic resource projects.

"All of this could be done at lower cost and risk via targeted cooperation rather than calls to redraw maps," Dennings wrote.

It remains unclear if this is a plan the President-elect would be interested in, as he has called time and time again for the complete acquisition of the land. On Tuesday, at a press conference in Mar-a-Lago, Trump refused to rule out invading Greenland or Panama— another autonomous country that has been on his sights since his election victory— via military force.

Asked if he would rule out economic or military coercion to gain control of Greenland and the Panama Canal, Trump said, "I'm not gonna commit to that. No. It might be that you'll have to do something."

"I can't assure you— you're talking about Panama and Greenland— no, I can't assure you on either of those two," Trump said in response to the questions at the press conference. "But I can say this: We need them for economic security."