What's Behind the Greenland Pitch?

By Bob Bixby, Host, Facing the Future

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This week on Facing the Future, the guest was former Congressman Richard Swett (D-NH), who also served as U.S. Ambassador to Denmark. He discussed President Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland from Denmark and explained why restoring trust in government is a prerequisite to solving major problems such as unsustainable debt. 

With the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) now being considered in the Senate, Swett said, “you basically end up with yet another example of why Americans don’t trust government. Whether we say we’re going to balance the budget, and we never do, or we say we’re going to do something else, and we never do, these are the things that just destroy people’s trust in government. Once you elect someone and they do the opposite of what they promised, nothing good comes of that. And so I think that Trump has proven himself no different than any of the other politicians that came before him and didn’t do what really needs to be done, which is to put our fiscal house in order.”

The need to restore trust in government is a vital concern for Swett. “The fundamental point that I am now trying to make in any public discussion that I’m engaged in,” he said, “is that our country is at a point where we are struggling with the public’s faith in government, the trust that they have in government being able to balance the budget, to do the right thing with regard to the environment, to take care of various groups of people with special needs. These are all things that we have a grave concern are not going to be taken care of, and we’re going to suffer for that in the future.”

“How do we correct that?” he asked. “Well, in the history of our country, we correct it, unfortunately, with war, with economic catastrophe, with environmental global catastrophe. I don’t want that to be the case this time around, but we’ve got to look at our history and try and understand what it was that motivated us to correct these problems then, and try and do that now. As we have found from the work that has gone on at The Concord Coalition, it’s very difficult to do if people don’t feel the pain of the problem personally. I’m not advocating that we get to that point, but I know that it will arrive regardless of our wanting it to or not wanting it to if we don’t do something about the problems today.”

President Trump’s repeated suggestion that the United States should somehow acquire Greenland, currently a part of Denmark, has also stoked controversy. Swett thinks the “angst and concern is overrated and unnecessary” because he views Trump’s statements as a negotiating tactic. 

Trump “is a transactional leader,” Swett said. “He does everything based on the transaction of the moment. I don’t know that his long term view is a part of this, or even important. Just as he did with his real estate deals, he starts out with an extreme position that everybody thinks is absolutely absurd. But that’s how he is able to keep as much of the transaction going in his favor. Whether it’s ethical or not, or whether you like it or not, or whatever your criticisms might be, he is someone who does his negotiating in that fashion, and ultimately, he will come to an agreement that is, of course, what he thinks is most beneficial to him, or in this case most beneficial to the United States.”

In Swett’s view, Trump “understands that in order to make our economy strong and vibrant, the United States needs raw materials. And so he’s looking around the world and seeing where there are great reserves of raw materials or potential reserves of raw materials that can be tapped. One is the tundra of Canada, and the other is the icebound expanses of Greenland.”

Swett’s advice to the Danish Ambassador is to “just be a hard negotiator. Give back some kind of extreme absurd counter to what Trump is saying, but, more importantly, respectfully engage with him in how Greenland might be developed to benefit both countries. Greenland could be a very potential area for the mining of and extracting of important raw earth metals that are very important to industry in the United States, and whose revenues could be very important to the economy of Denmark”

“What Trump is doing,” Swett said, “is what he does best, which is keeping his name at the top of the news cycle, keeping everybody off balance. But he is doing it, not because he’s actually going to take over Greenland, but because he wants the attention, and he does have at the core of what he’s doing, an understanding that in order for our economy to continue to grow, which will help to pay off our debt, we especially need the raw materials to do that with.”

Hear more on Facing the Future. Concord Coalition Senior Advisor Bob Bixby hosts the program each week on WKXL in Concord N.H., and it is also available via podcast. Join us as The Concord Coalition team discusses issues relating to national fiscal policy with budget experts, industry leaders, and elected officials. Past broadcasts are available here. You can subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Pandora, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or with an RSS feed. Follow Facing the Future on Facebook, and watch videos from past episodes on The Concord Coalition YouTube channel.