Pressure on China and pure ‘trolling’: Why Trump is pushing an expansionist agenda

In the final weeks before Donald Trump returns to the White House, the focus of his public remarks has not been about the confirmations of his Cabinet picks or on key parts of his campaign agenda like mass deportations or lowering prices. 

Instead, Trump — who has criticized U.S. military involvement in other countries — is advocating for America to gain more global territory, including by force, if necessary. Call it his annexation agenda.

In recent days, Trump has repeatedly pushed the idea that he will take over Greenland from Denmark, reclaim the Panama Canal after the United States returned it to the Panamanian government decades ago and absorb Canada into the United States. Trump said he is keeping the option of using the military to gain control of Greenland and the Panama Canal on the table while saying he will exert “economic force” to pressure Canada to join the United States. He has also said he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Denali, North America’s tallest peak.

Panamanian, Danish and Canadian leaders have all shot down Trump’s wishes, with responses ranging from no to not “a snowball’s chance in hell.”

Trump’s willingness to provoke longtime U.S. allies and throw out unexpected demands gives a glimpse of the domestic, and global, shakeup he hopes to accomplish. Democrats and Republicans who spoke to NBC News, including close Trump allies, said some of his recent demands are serious and some are ways to gain leverage for other parts of his agenda, while others are just trolling. 

Greenland is an island Trump very much desires. A person familiar with the discussions said Trump has never given up on acquiring Greenland, which he tried to purchase during his first term for defense reasons and was rebuffed. 

This person added that Trump also enjoys the way the effort gets people spun up. On Tuesday, Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., took a trip to Nuuk, the largest population center on the island of about 57,000 people, and the president-elect called in to deliver a message to Greenlanders.

Acquiring the Panama Canal falls into the category of something Trump may want but is also using as an economic pressure campaign.

For years, he has felt that President Jimmy Carter should not have returned the Panama Canal to Panama. But John Bolton, a former Trump national security adviser who has since broken with him, told NBC News in an interview that while he served under Trump he didn’t hear any talk of acquiring the Panama Canal (or making Canada the 51st state). The person familiar also said reclaiming the canal was not a focus during Trump’s first term in office.

But it is now on the table because of another part of Trump’s agenda: combating the influence of China. 

According to this person and a second person familiar with the discussions, Trump allies have shown the president-elect data they argue shows Chinese encroachment in the Western Hemisphere, including the accusation that Panama has the ability to prioritize Chinese over American shipping. The second person familiar with the discussions said Trump’s threat to take the canal is “a negotiating tool” to get Panama to get more favorable treatment for U.S. shipments.

On Canada, Trump’s remarks amount to “an epic troll,” the first person said, adding that he is not serious about absorbing the country into the United States. Yet, this person said, Trump believes his trolling could get some policies to cut his way and help with negotiations. Last month, Canadian officials announced a plan to increase spending on border security, which was a focus of the Republican presidential primary campaign last year.

“I split those into two buckets,” a senior aide to a GOP senator said, noting that the propositions to reclaim the Panama Canal and acquire Greenland are “more serious,” pointing to Trump Jr.’s visit to Greenland.

“I don’t take Canada as seriously,” this person added. “He’s just making fun of [Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau.”

A second senior aide to a GOP senator said of the overall effort: “I am not taking it seriously. But I guess we’ll see what happens.”

Meanwhile, some of Trump’s earliest ambassador picks were for Canada, Denmark and Panama, and his statements announcing the latter two included references to Greenland and the Panama Canal.John D. Feeley, who was the U.S. ambassador to Panama under President Barack Obama and Trump before he resigned over policy disagreements with Trump, said Trump’s public push will put incoming ambassadors behind the eight ball.

“If Trump attempts to operationalize the threats made to Panama, Canada and Greenland … it’s going to put any ambassador in the most difficult position I can conceive of: telling a treaty ally your boss plans to take their sovereign homeland,” Feeley said.

Countering China’s influence

Trump and his allies have pointed to national security as the rationale for why the U.S. should acquire Greenland, with Trump posting on his Truth Social platform last month that American “ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.” The island, which has been under Denmark’s control since the 14th century, was fully integrated into Denmark in 1953 under the country’s constitution, and it became a self-governing territory in 1979. Greenlanders have full citizenship in Denmark.

Greenland is closer to New York than Copenhagen, and the United States briefly occupied it during World War II. It is home to a large U.S. Air Force base and major mineral reserves. In recent years, China has sought to make inroads on the island.

Carla Sands, Trump’s former ambassador to Denmark, said the Danes simply do not have the capacity to properly defend the island, while China’s attempts to boost ties with Greenland have had American officials on high alert.

“We are great partners and allies with Denmark,” she said. “We’ve had diplomatic relations with them for 200 years. They’re founding members of NATO. So we’re good friends, but good friends sometimes have to have tough conversations. And one of the conversations was, ‘How are you going to defend Greenland, part of your kingdom, when you can’t even defend Denmark proper?’” 

“The only capabilities that Denmark controls for Greenland are defense and foreign policy; everything else Greenland controls,” Sands added. “And that makes Greenland really, really vulnerable to bad actors, because they want economic growth.”

But Rufus Gifford, the ambassador to Denmark in the Obama administration and finance chair of Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, said gaining Greenland would not be anywhere near as simple as Trump may make it seem.For starters, Gifford said, “any Danish prime minister that loses Greenland in this day and age would be the laughingstock of the country, and would be forever.” And, he added, Greenlanders may not want to give up their “fairly privileged place in Danish society.” 

As far as national security concerns go, Gifford said any military incursion into Greenland would invoke NATO’s Article Five, which requires the alliance’s members to defend it.

“There’s certainly concern about Chinese influence in Greenland, and there should be,” he said, adding, though, “the only reason why you would say that, for national security reasons, Greenland needs to be American would be if you’re threatening to pull out of NATO. And that part is all the scarier.”

When it comes to the Panama Canal, Trump has framed his own focus on U.S. ships being “overcharged” to use the waterway, as he said Tuesday, while he believes Chinese ships are getting preferential treatment. Trump also said he long believed Carter was mistaken to have negotiated treaties that turned over control of the canal to Panama.

A Hong Kong-based company operates two of the five ports that serve the canal. China, via its 2020 national security law, has extended its influence over Hong Kong. 

Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, who said in December that “every square meter of the canal belongs to Panama and will continue to be so,” denied last month that China has influence over the waterway, which the Panama Canal Authority administers.

“In the president’s universe of alternate facts, he can huff and puff and maybe Panama will return him the canal,” Feeley said. “In the real world, however, Panama is not about to return the canal. What he has done, in practical political terms, is solidify tremendous support among the 4.3 million Panamanians around Mulino, a relatively new president.”

‘A full-on takedown’

Trump has mocked the Canadian government for weeks after he met with Trudeau at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home, to discuss the potential for tariffs of 25% on Canadian goods imported into the United States. He has called Trudeau, who announced his resignation this week, “Gov. Trudeau” and suggested Canadians would love to be the 51st state. He has even called for hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, a famous Canadian who has been spotted at Mar-a-Lago, to run for prime minister.

At his news conference Tuesday, Trump said he would use “economic force” to merge Canada with the United States, describing the northern border as an “artificially drawn line.” He lamented the United States’ “spending hundreds of billions a year to take care of Canada,” a NATO ally that also shares a military alliance with the United States through North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Following Trump’s comments, Trudeau said on X: “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.”