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16th Aug 2019

“Greenland is not for sale” – The reaction in Denmark and Greenland to Trump’s interest

Alan Loughnane

Donald Trump Greenland

One of the more bizarre stories this week.

Donald Trump has done what Donald Trump does and made headlines in the form of a reported declaration of interest in buying Greenland from Denmark.

But the fact remains, Greenland is not on the market. Denmark is not interested in selling and most people from Greenland think it’s a terrible idea.

“Greenland is rich in valuable resources such as minerals, the purest water and ice, fish stocks, seafood, renewable energy and is a new frontier for adventure tourism. We’re open for business, not for sale,” Greenland’s Foreign Ministry tweeted.

This was reiterated by Greenland’s foreign minister, Ane Lone Bagger, in a comment to Reuters.

Former Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen tweeted: “It must be an April Fool’s Day joke … but totally out of [season]!”

“The Greenlandic people have their own rights,” Martin Lidegaard, the chairman of the Danish parliament’s foreign policy committee and former foreign minister told The Washington Post. “I hope it is a joke — to not just buy a country but also its people.”

According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump is reportedly interested in Greenland because of its strategic location as well as its wealth of natural resources, and is said to have asked advisors “with varying degrees of seriousness” whether the US could purchase the territory from Denmark.

Greenland has a population of about 56,000 people concentrated around the coastline, almost 90% of whom are indigenous Greenlandic Inuit people. It has a limited self-government and its own parliament.

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