Trump Wants To Seize Greenland Because He Doesn't Understand Trade |
Foreign Policy
Eric Boehm | 1.6.2026 3:50 PM
Imagine for a moment that you have the misfortune to be elected president of some nation. A neighboring nation possesses valuable natural resources that you'd like to have. How to proceed?
You could seize those resources by force. Certainly that's been a common method across much of human history. Hire some thugs to take what you want. Have them beat up the other guy if he gets in the way. Give your thugs uniforms and an internal hierarchy, and you might fool some people into believing the whole thing is more legitimate.
Alternatively, you could offer the other nation some of your own resources in exchange for the ones you want. Things go even more smoothly if you let the people in your country offer their resources in exchange for the stuff in the other country that they want. If you happen to be president of a country with the world's reserve currency, this deal gets better yet: Instead of offering your own resources, your people can probably just trade money for the things they want, and the other country will be happy to accept.
Everyone gets what they want and no one has to fight over it.
Unfortunately, President Donald Trump does not seem to understand this on a fundamental level. Again and again, Trump has shown that he views free trade as a suckers game. Why should everyone end up better off when he could win while others lose?
The Trump administration's renewed impulse to seize Greenland—on the heels of a military attack aimed at seizing Venezuelan oil production—is the latest example of this. It's also perhaps the riskiest,........