The United States wants Greenland. Indeed, Donald Trump and JD Vance say the United States needs Greenland. Verbally, Danish leaders are gently but firmly pushing back. But Denmark’s real resistance is likely to occur in the world of business.
Washington’s interest in Greenland is “very common sense… this matters to our security; this matters to our missile defence, and we’re going to protect America’s interests come hell or high water,” the vice president told conservative television cable channel Newsmax on 3rd April. That was after his visit to the Arctic island a few days earlier—a visit that was originally going to involve several stops but ended up featuring only a trip to America’s military base there. No Greenlanders had been willing to meet with Vance’s delegation. Trump, for his part, let it be known that “I think Greenland understands that the United States should own it”.
The Danish government responded swiftly. Foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen recorded a video message pointing out that the US is welcome to discuss increasing its security presence in Greenland. Thanks to a 1951 treaty with Denmark, the US has the right to build and operate military bases on the island. During the Cold War, the US maintained a string of bases there, but in recent decades it has reduced them and now only operates the Pituffik Space Base, which Vance visited.
Speaking from Greenland a few days after the US vice president’s trip, Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen warned that “the storm…has only begun” but reassured her nation, including self-governing Greenland, that “you know us, you know what we stand for, and you know that we will not give up”. And the head of Greenland’s newly elected government, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, wrote on Facebook that the US won’t “get Greenland”: “We don’t belong to others. We decide our future ourselves.”
Words alone won’t change any minds in the Trump administration, a fact of which Frederiksen’s government appears acutely aware. “We respect that the United States needs a greater military presence in Greenland... We—Denmark and Greenland—are very much open to discussing this with you, with an open mind,” Rasmussen said in his video.
The Danish government also knows it will have to demonstrate not just a collaborative mindset but power. Otherwise, those who see Denmark as a small country of a mere six million people, one that prefers negotiation over conflict, might conclude that the nation can easily be pushed over.
On 2nd April, only days after Vance’s Greenland jaunt, news of a significant business transaction arrived. Lanco Group, a US infrastructure company, and the Canadian railway firm Canadian Pacific Kansas City were selling the railway connecting the ports at both ends of the Panama Canal. The canal is another part of the world Trump wants the US to control; he alleges that China dominates the canal, though Panama insists it is in charge. But the North American owners of the the crucial railway running alongside the canal have decided to sell it—to AP Møller-Maersk, the Danish shipping giant.
“PCRC [Panama Canal Railway Company] represents an attractive infrastructure investment in the region aligned to our core services of intermodal container movement. The company is highly regarded for its operational excellence and will provide a significant opportunity for us to offer a broader range of services to the global shipping customers we serve,” Keith Svendsen, a long-time Maersk executive who leads the company’s APM Terminals division, explained in a press announcement.
It most certainly took Maersk, Lanco and Canadian Pacific Kansas City more than four days to negotiate the deal. How long? We don’t know. But with impeccable timing, the acquisition highlighted a perhaps not obvious state of affairs: in certain business areas, Denmark is a global behemoth. Maersk is the world’s second largest container-shipping company. Perhaps Denmark’s most recognisable brand—Lego—is also growing like gangbusters. The company is so well-run that it outperforms large stocks, bonds, gold and alternative investments—and has been investing heavily in manufacturing in the US. (Carbon-neutral manufacturing, naturally.) And American consumers are hooked on Ozempic, the weight-loss drug invented, manufactured and sold by Denmark’s Novo Nordisk. The pharma firm also happens to be one of Europe’s most valuable companies and has a market cap larger than Denmark’s entire GDP. In key business sectors, Denmark is a global powerhouse.
In late January, when Trump began resurrecting his claims on Greenland, I suggested that Denmark should deploy its business power in response, a proposal picked up by the Financial Times last month. The Panama Canal railway deal seems an indicator of how Denmark may respond. To be sure, the country’s business powerhouses are privately owned and act in their own interests, not on the basis of patriotism. But it’s in the interests of every Danish company that the country continues to thrive.
Theodore Roosevelt liked to repeat the aphorism that if you speak softly and carry a big stick, you will go far. Denmark may be developing a 21st-century version of the respected president’s maxim.
