I fully understand why our President-elect is posting information and making speeches about buying Greenland.
We haven’t had much snow this year. I’m looking out at my front yard, and can see only a few little patches. One of them is shaped a bit like Greenland. A possible omen?
Owning Greenland as a U.S. territory or state would pretty much guarantee that at least part of the country would have lots of snow.
The people in Greenland don’t seem too hot on the idea, however. Greenland’s prime minister, Múte B Egede, responded to Trump’s comments: “We are not for sale and we will not be for sale.”
Eric Trump posted an image on ‘X’ that showed the U.S. adding Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada to an Amazon online shopping cart.
Canada also gets more snow than the rest of the U.S. That is to say, “the rest of the U.S.” once we buy all the things in our Amazon shopping cart.
Online shopping and social media have definitely made foreign policy a simple matter.
The Panama Canal, on the other hand, doesn’t get much snow at all. So why we would buy it, I’m not sure. Just because China might be making offers?
Fortunately, President Trump knows more about this stuff than I do.
In the early hours of Christmas, he wrote:
It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada. I look forward to seeing the Governor again soon so that we may continue our in depth talks on Tariffs and Trade, the results of which will be truly spectacular for all!
Ha ha! Justin Trudeau is Canada’s Prime Minister, but he would naturally assume the title of ‘Governor’ once Canada becomes the 51st state.
I have nothing against Canada becoming the 51st state — I hear they have more gun owners per capita than the U.S. — but there is no way Texas is going to allow that to happen. It was bad enough when Alaska was admitted into the Union and Texas got demoted to the uncomfortable position of “second-largest state.”
But to our President-elect, this whole thing seems to have very little to do with the lack of snow in southern Colorado. It’s about money. In an interview on NBC News “Meet the Press” last week, he talked about the trade imbalance. We buy more stuff from Canada than they buy from us, so it’s sort of like a subsidy.
We’re subsidizing Canada to the tune over $100 billion a year. We’re subsidizing Mexico for almost $300 billion. We shouldn’t be — why are we subsidizing these countries? If we’re going to subsidize them, let them become a state.
In fact, we have a negative trade imbalance with lots of countries. China, Vietnam, Germany, Japan, India, South Korea, Italy, and Ireland, for example. Maybe we should make them states as well, for everyone’s benefit.
But there would be a real problem if we made Mexico a state. Instantly, all our undocumented immigrants would be U.S. citizens. There goes our big plan to deport them.
Plus, no snow in Mexico.
But I got to thinking… what if Greenland were actually for sale? What would it cost? The U.S. hasn’t tried to buy a democratic country since… well, I don’t we’ve ever tried to buy a democratic country. They were all pretty much colonial possessions, ruled by kings. Sometimes, a king would get in a fix — you know, gambling debts or alimony, that kind of things — and have to sell off the whole Louisiana Purchase. Or maybe Alaska.
Buying countries was so easy back then, when you didn’t have to ask the people who actually lived there.
Then we have the little problem of Denmark increasing the defense budget in Greenland, committing at least $1.5 billion to bolster its military capabilities there. Including two long-range drones.
When you’re the only place with snow, you have to be ready to defend it.