Donald Trump Eyes Greenland Once More After Trying To Purchase The Protectorate Last Year

President Donald Trump may have been unsuccessful in his quest to purchase the Danish protectorate of Greenland last August, but he appears to have his sights set on it once more, according to Politico.

However, this time around, the president is employing a new tactic. Instead of another offer to buy the advantageously located island, he is instead reportedly hoping to open up an American consulate in the region.

Trump rolled out the proposals last week, offering the State Department over $500 million to build the first permanent consular location in the Arctic Circle.

“It allows us first to represent the Americans who are there and second to have more of a strategic presence,” a State Department official said of the new scheme.

“It’s not very expensive…. It’s a start. And it says that we’re at least there and attempting to play.”

Walter Berbrick, founding director of the Arctic Studies group at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, praised the new initiative.

“[Greenland is] maybe one of the most strategic locations in the world because of its geographic location,” Berbrick said.

“Being able to have access to the top of the North Pole and also the [Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom] gap and being directly across from Russia — it’s an important place,” he concluded.

But it is not just Greenland’s geographic coordinates that have made it such a focus for Trump. The island is also abundant in rare earth minerals, which are used to make everything from satellites to fighter jets to smartphones.

But such natural resources have also caught the eyes of other nations, specifically Russia and China.

China, in particular, had hoped to get a foothold in the region by building an airport by the Southern coast. However, the United States was able to convince Denmark to reject the plans.

Meanwhile, Greenland’s representative to the United States, Inuuteq Holm Olsen, praised the State Department’s new proposal, stating that he believed that Greenlanders would welcome an American presence.

Mead Treadwell, former lieutenant governor of Alaska, explained Greenland’s benefits in the partnership.

“We’ve been assisting Greenland with geological research that may lead to oil and gas … [and] strategic mineral development,” he said.

The upbeat negotiations are a far cry from this past summer when Trump was widely mocked by the media after announcing his hopes to purchase the island.

After Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen publicly returned that Greenland was “not for sale,” the president canceled a planned trip to Copenhagen, the capital of the Scandinavian country.