By Kurt Cobb - Mar 31, 2025, 1:00 PM CDT
- President Trump's interest in annexing territories like Greenland and Canada appears to be driven by a belief in a zero-sum world where securing resources is crucial for national security and economic dominance.
- The United States' dependence on other countries for critical minerals and food, combined with the strategic importance of the Panama Canal, underlies the potential for aggressive resource acquisition strategies.
- While other nations pursue resources through diplomacy and investment, Trump's approach has included the possibility of military action, raising concerns about international stability and territorial integrity.
The "America First" slogan often used by candidate Donald Trump in his first and second presidential campaigns might sound on its surface to indicate disengagement from global affairs and a focus on domestic priorities. So, it may seem puzzling that President Donald Trump is talking about annexing Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO ally; Canada, a sovereign country and a NATO ally; and retaking the Panama Canal.
If, however, you see Trump's pronouncement within the context of global economic and military competition in what he perceives is a zero-sum world (a win by one side must be a loss by another), then this kind of rhetoric begins to make sense. Such a view actually implicitly presumes that resources available to global society are finite or, at the very least, worryingly scarce and therefore must be produced domestically for security reasons or extracted willingly or unwillingly from other countries.
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Trouble is, there is a very long list of important minerals that the United States must get either partially or wholly from other countries in order to maintain the smooth functioning of its modern technical economy. In addition, America, which had previously been a breadbasket to the world, is now a net importer of food—though this is on a value basis, not necessarily on a tonnage or calorie basis.
So if the Trump administration believes that we are moving toward a last-man-standing contest with other major powers, then it's not surprising that the administration is trying both to bring production of basic resources and finished goods back onto U.S. soil AND seeking to secure mineral and other resources from other countries. There is no quicker way to increase domestic production of important minerals than to make countries and territories rich in mineral resources part of the United States. Hence, Trump's desire to annex Greenland and Canada. We already know for sure that Canada has large mineral resources including vast oil and natural gas reserves. Greenland is believed to host large, undiscovered economically viable deposits of minerals.
So that leaves the Panama Canal. Of course, the canal is a pinch point for world trade. It carries 6 percent of the world's maritime trade and 40 percent of U.S. container traffic. In fact, the United States is "the canal's largest user. In 2021 over 73% of all vessels transiting the canal were destined for or departing from U.S. ports." How goods and resources get moved around the world can be just as important as the goods themselves.
There are contrasting approaches to the emerging scarcity of critical resources. China chooses mostly the path of diplomacy and investment in places such as Africa in order to secure resources including food for the Chinese nation. Russia, which has long had access to huge mineral and energy sources domestically, has had to become even more self-sufficient in response to stringent trade sanctions applied by the United States and its European allies in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
The question is not whether nations will seek out critical materials and food outside their borders when they cannot produce them at home, but how they will go about it. Trump has not ruled out military action to take the Panama Canal and Greenland. Annexing Canada seems like a passing fantasy. On the other hand, so many things which seemed unlikely on January 19 are now reality, and so it might be premature to rule out increasingly unsettling talk and even concrete moves to annex one or more of these targets.
By Kurt Cobb via Resource Insights
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